Inspectors

Maybe it's me, but I find it amazing that 39 Maryland Department of the Environment inspectors made only 2,213 visits to more than 12,000 active construction sites ("Audit questions agency's practices," Dec. 2). Each inspector, if working a 40 hour week, has the potential to work 2,080 hours a year. If 2,213 sites were visited, and 81,120 man-hours were available, this would mean each inspector made one visit to a construction site every 36.6 work hours or essentially, one visit a week.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake has hired a former FBI agent and congressional investigator to become Baltimore's new inspector general. Robert H. Pearre Jr., an FBI agent in the 1970s and 1980s, will begin June 17, officials said Thursday. He will earn $132,400 a year. Pearre, 59, replaces former Inspector General David N. McClintock, who earned a reputation for thorough investigations and independence before leaving in February to become the chief internal investigator for Jefferson Parish, La. Baltimore City Solicitor George Nilson led the search process for McClintock's replacement.

On a recent cold, gray morning, state bridge inspector Van Swift jumped into his office: a 4-by-3-foot white bucket at the end of a 60-foot hydraulic arm anchored to a flatbed "snooper" truck. Working a cluster of joysticks, he swung the bucket away from the truck and over the side of the 800-foot Interstate 70 bridge spanning the Patapsco River between Baltimore and Howard counties. As the bucket descended, the whoosh of highway traffic gave way to the rumble of tires overhead. Swift maneuvered the bucket toward a web of girders, beams and turnbuckles about 120 feet above the rushing water.

Baltimore's housing office has disbanded its security unit, laying off seven sworn police officers, the agency said Thursday. The duties of the Lease Enforcement Unit - which investigates criminal activity in public housing to determine if a resident has violated his or her lease - will be assumed by housing's Inspector General's office, which investigates fraud, waste and abuse, said Cheron Porter, a spokeswoman for Baltimore Housing. "The Housing Authority of Baltimore City budget has suffered cuts generally over the past couple of years and with sequestration, more cuts could be on the horizon," Porter said in an email.

The American Society of Home Inspectors has a new Internet tool to help consumers find a qualified inspector to check out a home they may buy. Searches can be run with a variety of criteria including ZIP codes or area codes, neighborhood or an inspector's last name. The site provides information on how to contact licensed inspectors. The trade group maintains that buyers should choose inspectors who have been trained and have satisfied the organization's standards and ethics code. The group said potential buyers should interview inspectors, asking questions such as what the inspection will cover, if the inspector is specifically experienced in residential inspections and whether the inspector encourages the client to attend the inspection.

Postal inspectors are examining documents and mail seized from a Reisterstown sweepstakes marketing company after thousands of people complained they had been bilked in buying memberships.A temporary injunction issued by the Federal Trade Commission also was delivered to Quality Marketing Inc. when the U.S. Postal Investigation Service raided the company at 6 a.m. Tuesday, in a mail-fraud investigation begun in 1992, authorities said."The materials will be studied and taken before a grand jury," said Paul J. Trimbur, a U.S. postal inspector leading the investigation.

WASHINGTON - The U.N. inspectors in Iraq have begun their investigation of various Iraqi factories and military sites. Pay no attention. They will find nothing. The key to this whole inspection gambit - indeed, the key to whether we end up in a war with Iraq - will come down not to where the inspectors look inside Iraq, but to whom they decide to interview outside Iraq, and whether that person has the courage to talk. The fate of Iraq will all come down to the least-noticed paragraph in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441: Point 5. The framers of this resolution had learned their lessons from previous Iraqi inspections.

A week after the Baltimore liquor board imposed a mandatory eight-hour workday for liquor inspectors, five members of the inspection staff have filed for leave from their jobs because of stress or illness. Chief liquor inspector Samuel T. Daniels Jr. confirmed yesterday that several inspectors had requested leave, but he would not identify them. He said the requests started coming in several days after he imposed the new eight-hour workday policy, which went into effect Sept. 12. The new policy was introduced in an effort to ensure that inspectors were putting in 40 hours a week.

A year after a boiler accident that severely burned a city elementary school pupil, a state regulatory panel yesterday took the first steps to improve oversight of heating and hot water systems in public buildings.A task force of people who inspect, repair and maintain such systems will be created this summer to review the issue.In addition, Commissioner John P. O'Connor of the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said he will suggest increasing his inspection staff by about 50 percent in a report to the governor Monday.

THERE IS NO good reason for inspectors to have delayed reporting safety problems discovered in furnaces and boilers at Baltimore City schools. Perhaps the inspectors thought they were doing the schools a favor by giving them time to correct the problems. But the possibility that a disabling, even fatal, accident could occur while they waited for repairs to be made should have been paramount.Yet a Sun investigation has turned up at least 21 instances where serious safety violations at 16 schools over a two-year period were not reported to the state as required.

In my reading and listening about the fertilizer plant fire and explosion in West, Texas, I have noticed a dearth of comments about the dangers faced by first responders ("Obama to honor firefighters killed in Texas fertilizer blast," April 24). One of the purposes of the various federal and local chemical reporting requirements is to provide nearby fire companies with information for protecting themselves and for appropriate methods of reacting to an incident. That knowledge, buttressed by fire company inspections of nearby plants, can save lives.

Black scuff marks line the staircase at 922 N. Charles St., left there by frustrated tenants kicking the wall in a vain attempt to make their neighbor, the Museum Restaurant and Lounge, quiet down. Most nights, tenants say, the sound of DJs hyping up the crowd rattles china cabinets and nerves alike. "It's thump, thump, thump from the music," said Will Penn, 48, who lives in one of the apartments next door. Penn, like many other Baltimoreans who live near bars, said he has filed complaints using the city's 311 system but has seen nothing change.

On a recent cold, gray morning, state bridge inspector Van Swift jumped into his office: a 4-by-3-foot white bucket at the end of a 60-foot hydraulic arm anchored to a flatbed "snooper" truck. Working a cluster of joysticks, he swung the bucket away from the truck and over the side of the 800-foot Interstate 70 bridge spanning the Patapsco River between Baltimore and Howard counties. As the bucket descended, the whoosh of highway traffic gave way to the rumble of tires overhead. Swift maneuvered the bucket toward a web of girders, beams and turnbuckles about 120 feet above the rushing water.

Baltimore Inspector General David N. McClintock, who earned a reputation for thorough investigations and independence, is leaving city government, the mayor's office said Thursday. McClintock is leaving Baltimore for Jefferson Parish, La., where he will take on "a new opportunity," the mayor's office said. McClintock will become that jurisdiction's chief internal investigator. “David McClintock has done a very good job improving the Office of the Inspector General since his arrival in 2010, turning a dysfunctional office into a real asset for city government to use to investigate potential fraud, waste, and abuse,” Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a statement.

Federal workers' unions and food safety groups have joined to oppose new rules proposed by the Department of Agriculture to streamline federal poultry inspections. The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service says the rules would "modernize" inspections of young chickens and turkeys, saving money for businesses and taxpayers while allowing inspectors to focus on the areas of poultry production that pose the greatest risk to food safety. The new inspection system grew out of a pilot program that began in the 1990s under President Bill Clinton.

State and local officials have returned to the Eastern Shore communities ravaged by superstorm Sandy's heavy rains and high winds to comb over the damage in hopes of appealing federal officials' decision to deny aid to Maryland. The Federal Emergency Management Agency declined the state's request for funds for individual residents because the damage was not considered substantial enough. But U.S. Sens. Barbara A. Mikulski and Ben Cardin, Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration and other state leaders vowed this week to appeal the decision, citing extensive damage to the area, where more than 300 homes are estimated to have been severely damaged.

State regulators who promised to sharpen oversight of public boiler systems after a severe accident in the Baltimore schools last year are proposing to weaken hiring criteria for inspectors, making Maryland's standards among the lowest in the country.In a Sept. 22 internal memo, a top official with the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said the agency could hasten hiring of inspectors by eliminating a key requirement: certification by the National Board of Boiler and Pressure Vessel Inspectors.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - When United Nations inspectors return to Iraq, they are unlikely to find finished weapons for chemical, nuclear or biological warfare, according to former inspectors. Instead, the multinational teams will focus on discovering the machinery and materials used to make weapons and the missiles that could deliver them to other countries. "You ask to look at the equipment itself," said Tim McCarthy, who completed 13 missions in Iraq and served as deputy chief inspector for the United Nations' missile team in the 1990s.

James A. Buck gladly accepted the package at his Parkville office from the deliveryman wearing a UPS uniform. But minutes later, police swooped in to arrest Buck, 54, and seized the parcel, which had contained three pounds of marijuana he sent to himself from California, according to court records. Buck pleaded guilty to a possession charge, though he said in a recent interview that the drugs were for medicinal use. Buck's case and search warrants unsealed last week offer a glimpse into a long-standing — and growing — smuggling practice: mailing drugs from California to Maryland.

Edwin P. Post II, a retired federal housing inspector and veteran of two wars, died Oct. 25 of complications from Alzheimer's disease at Sunrise Assisted-Living in Columbia. The former Mays Chapel resident was 89. The son of a Con-Ed lineman and a homemaker, Edwin Price Post II was born and raised on Staten Island, N.Y., where he graduated from McKee High School. He served in the Navy during World War II from 1942 to 1947, where he was a patternmaker. He was recalled to active duty during the Korean War, serving again from 1950 to 1951.