Maintenance Workers

The city's decision to dock Kevin Humes a week's pay for speaking to the press has got to be one of the all-time great acts of pettiness. Did I miss something? Is Schaefer mayor again?Not only is the Humes docking petty, but it's also unconstitutional -- not to mention a violation of the man's earthly, fundamental, inalienable -- are you listenin' to me, boy? -- God-given, full-blooded American rights!It's very simple. Kevin Humes has the right to criticize his government. Just because he works for his government doesn't mean he can't knock it. (Maybe he can't because he works with a paint brush instead of a briefcase.

A painter for Baltimore's Housing Authority says his right to free speech evaporated in the summer heat last week after he criticized the agency's decision to suspend heat leave for maintenance workers.Kevin Humes was suspended without pay after he appeared on television news shows on Thursday, shortly after Daniel P. Henson III, the authority's executive director, ordered workers to stay on the job as the temperature soared above 90 degrees.Mr. Humes made pointed statements about the loss of heat leave in front of the cameras.

Housing Commissioner Daniel P. Henson III's unilateral decision to cancel "heat days" is sure to cause much grumbling among the 430 Housing Authority maintenance workers who no longer can quit -- with pay -- every time the temperature reaches 90 degrees by noon and humidity registers at least 55 percent.Let them grumble.If there is any scandal in Mr. Henson's decision, it is in the fact that this extraordinary featherbedding clause was allowed to exist for 30 years without any whistle blower making a big stink about it earlier.

The chief of Baltimore's Housing Authority yesterday scrapped the policy of granting maintenance workers "heat leave," saying they can't be given time off when there is a backlog of 30,000 requests for repairs in public housing.Daniel P. Henson III, the authority's executive director, indefinitely suspended a provision in the workers' contract that gives them the rest of the day off if the temperature reaches 90 degrees or higher with 55 percent humidity by noon.He cited a clause in the contract that allows the authority to keep its 430 maintenance workers on in emergency situations.

When its broiling in Baltimore, maintenance workers for the city Housing Authority get something most others who labor in the heat can only dream about -- the afternoon off, with pay.The workers' contract requires the Housing Authority to release them when the temperature reaches 90 by noon, with at least 55 percent humidity.Yesterday marked the 17th time this summer when 430 maintenance workers were sent home at 1 p.m. -- at a total cost of more than $200,000.It also marked the seventh time the Housing Authority had erred by releasing the workers when the official noon temperature was below 90. At noon yesterday, it was 89 degrees downtown, according to the National Weather Service.

More than 400 people showed up yesterday for the state's second public hearing on welfare reform, where they complained once again about inadequate cash assistance, overwhelming paperwork and the bad manners of the people they deal with every day.But unlike the Aug. 4 hearing on Maryland's proposed overhaul of public assistance, these were workers, not clients, testifying before the Governor's Commission on Welfare Reform. Their complaints were remarkably similar to those heard earlier, although they came from the other side of the desk.

Eighty inmates in two sections of the Baltimore County Detention Center in Towson set fires and pelted a guard booth with debris during a 15 minute noontime riot yesterday.Correctional Officer Leonard Foy was injured when glass from the window of an elevated control booth shattered and a sliver hit his eye. He was treated and released at Greater Baltimore Medical Center, a hospital spokeswoman said.No inmates were injured, jail officials said.The prisoners set fire to trash and a shower curtain, destroyed several wall telephones and ripped down sprinkler pipes, which caused water leakage.

In a dramatic effort to sweep away peoblems plaguing East Baltimore's Flag House Courts, an army of police and maintenance workers descended on a high-rise at the housing project yesterday to evict squatters and drug dealers and to give the building a fresh coat of paint, clean stairwells and even plant a flower garden.Operation ECHO, which stands for Extraordinary Comprehensive Housekeeping Operation, started at 9 a.m. when 42 city police officers joined 30 Housing Authority police officers at 107 S. Albemarle St. to inspect the building's 118 units for illegal tenants.

At a meeting with maintenance workers yesterday, Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke pledged to improve safety in the public housing projects and to provide the workers with more supplies and better training.The mayor also told the meeting of several hundred workers at the War Memorial Building downtown that the city's Housing Authority is trying to come up with a performance-based incentive system."We don't want to pay people dragging their feet the same as people busting their butt," Mr. Schmoke said.

Nearly a fourth of the employees at Leedmark, the one-stop shopping hybrid that opened last May in Glen Burnie, were told yesterday they'd lost their jobs.The European-style hypermarket laid off 62 full-time and 32 part-time workers in a move to bolster the store during a recession, managers said."We truly regret having to make this unpleasant decision, but thestate of the economy has forced our hand," Thomas Lenkevich, president of G. B. Glenmark, Ltd. Co., Leedmark's operating company, told workers in a meeting yesterday morning.