Reorganization

Maj. Phillip Kasten has been appointed to the position of chief deputy in the Carroll County Sheriff's Office as Sheriff Kenneth Tregoning announced an internal reorganization in the office last week. Sheriff Tregoning also consolidated the Investigative and Field Services bureaus and appointed Maj. Thomas Long as Bureau Chief. Kasten fills a position that has been vacant since the retirement of Col. Robert Keefer on July 9, 2008. The chief deputy will oversee the daily operational and administrative responsibilities for the Departments' of Sheriff Services and Corrections.

Nearly three dozen workers at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development office in Baltimore - roughly a third of the agency's workforce in Maryland - are being forced to transfer out of state or take a buyout. The choice, which will affect 32 employees at the agency's South Howard Street field office, comes as part of a national reorganization aimed at saving about $45 million a year. The department is consolidating workers in 50 offices nationwide who facilitate the construction and rehabilitation of multifamily housing into 10 offices, HUD spokesman Jerry Brown said Wednesday.

When county office workers return to work tomorrow morning, they'll be part of what Commissioner Elmer C. Lippy Jr. calls a "lean, mean governmental machine."More likely, they'll pretty much return to their jobs.The County Commissioners on Thursday afternoon officially unveiled their much talked about -- and little explained -- governmental reorganization with the promise of improved efficiency.But just how that efficiency is to be measured -- and what it means to Carroll residents -- remained unexplained last week.

Bethesda-based Marriott International warned the state that it will lay off 35 employees in June, and potentially several hundred others later in the year, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said Friday. The company's layoff warning notice said it is reorganizing and outsourcing some "information resources" operations. The initial cuts are planned for June 28 in Bethesda, Frederick and Gaithersburg. Marriott said several hundred more employees could be laid off between July and December.

Unlike his numerous, more impulsive predecessors, School Superintendent Walter G. Amprey was able to resist an urge to reorganize the city public school system for nearly three years. But now that he has caught the bug, he is pledging to do a major house-cleaning in the name of improving education. As an opener, he has downgraded his two top deputies. By the time this reorganization is implemented in September, more than 100 administrators may have been transferred, demoted or terminated.

Baltimore-based CitiFinancial, the consumer lending arm of financial giant Citigroup Inc., said Tuesday that it plans to close 330 branches across the U.S., including six in Maryland, as it reorganizes its business and continues to look for a buyer. The move will result in 500 to 600 job cuts, though it's not known how many employees will be affected in Maryland, according to CitiFinancial. Citigroup has been trying to sell CitiFinancial and other distressed assets since last year amid the financial crisis.

Merry-Go-Round Enterprises Inc. creditors and stockholders yesterday presented the company with a reorganization plan that could allow the Joppa-based clothier to leave bankruptcy protection by the summer.Merry-Go-Round analysts had predicted the retailer's bankruptcy case would drag on for at least another year. Yesterday's proposal, while still tentative and requiring approval the court, also appeared to be blessed by the company."We were reaching a point in the road where things could have become very contentious," said Wilbur L. Ross Jr., senior managing director of Rothschild Inc., a financial adviser to the company's equity holders, of the negotiations between the two sides.

When it comes to governmental reorganization, the do-it-now governor wants to do it later.At the first hearing on one of the reorganization plans advanced by House Speaker R. Clayton Mitchell Jr., aides to Gov. William Donald Schaefer responded with the threat of a veto and a counterproposal that would delay action on such restructuring until a new governor is sworn in."I never like to talk about vetoes during the legislative session," said David R. Iannucci, the governor's chief legislative aide, when asked about that possibility at a House Appropriations Committee hearing.

Burdened by a $2.7 million financial deficit, the NAACP has dismissed 10 employees and expects to cut the staff at its Northwest Baltimore headquarters by another 10 over the summer.The Rev. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr., the civil rights group's executive director, said the moves were part of a major reorganization of the NAACP. He contended that the "financial situation did not trigger the reorganization."However, Dr. Chavis, who became the NAACP's chief executive in April 1993, said:* The organization's general fund was $900,000 in the red last year, adding to an existing deficit.

A restructuring of the state Department of Economic and Employment Development turned into a small-scale purge this week, as 16 officials were dismissed and the agency's international division was set to lose its status as a separate division.The largest single move in the reorganization is a shift of the department's division of employment and training, along with 1,200 workers, to the Department of Licensing and Regulation. The new Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation will take over running unemployment insurance programs as well as research functions studying the state's economy.

Maj. Phillip Kasten has been appointed to the position of chief deputy in the Carroll County Sheriff's Office as Sheriff Kenneth Tregoning announced an internal reorganization in the office last week. Sheriff Tregoning also consolidated the Investigative and Field Services bureaus and appointed Maj. Thomas Long as Bureau Chief. Kasten fills a position that has been vacant since the retirement of Col. Robert Keefer on July 9, 2008. The chief deputy will oversee the daily operational and administrative responsibilities for the Departments' of Sheriff Services and Corrections.

Baltimore-based Vertis Holdings Inc., at one time the largest U.S. producer of advertising inserts in newspapers, plans to sell itself to a Wisconsin printing company for $258.5 million through an auction in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Vertis filed for Chapter 11 protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Delaware Wednesday. It also sought court approval to sell its assets to Quad/Graphics, which produces retail advertising inserts and direct marketing and in-store marketing campaigns. It is the third bankruptcy-law filing in five years for Vertis, which also sought the court's protection to reorganize its finances in 2008 and 2010.

New Howard school superintendent Renee Foose has named a deputy superintendent of operations, as part of an effort to divvy up duties held by deputy superintendent Mamie Perkins, who retired last week. Howard County schools chief operating officer Ray Brown has been named the school system's deputy superintendent of operations. He will also oversee the school system's state-mandated Bridge to Excellence plan and its strategic planning. School system chief of staff Sue Mascaro will now be responsible for policy management and charter schools, and chief academic officer Linda Wise will now head the school system's international partnerships.

The Maryland Board of Physicians should have its duties and powers more explicitly outlined by the General Assembly, and be split into two panels that can independently perform investigatory and disciplinary operations, according to an official review released Wednesday. It should also "finalize and implement sanctioning guidelines for physicians and allied health professionals as soon as possible," the review said, and work to create additional, "informal processes for case resolution.

The Maryland Board of Physicians is expected to get some advice Wednesday on how to reform itself, eight months after a legislative review found the panel was not working fast or efficiently enough to protect the public from bad doctors. Dr. Jay Perman, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, was expected to offer his recommendations for overhauling the system of reviewing complaints, which auditors said took far too long to be resolved. The board was also criticized for not having a uniform system of review and lacking transparency, sometimes in violation of open meetings laws.

Baltimore County Council members are poised to adopt a lean spending plan that would achieve savings largely through early retirements and reorganizations in a number of government departments. The council made only one cut Thursday to the $1.65 billion operating budget County Executive Kevin Kamenetz recommended in April. Members trimmed the Department of Public Works' fuel budget for dump trucks and other equipment by about $208,000 because the county auditor found that the administration had overestimated the cost of fuel.

Lockheed Martin Corp. yesterday announced a corporate reorganization brought about by the acquisition earlier this year of the the bulk of Loral Corp.On another front, the Bethesda-based defense and aerospace company said it is holding talks with a private defense company in Australia concerning the establishment of a new company.Under the reorganization, Lockheed Martin will retain six business sectors, with three of them reconstituted to incorporate the technical and operational efficiencies of the Lockheed Martin and Loral units.

The Carroll Commissioners have reorganized county government, demoting some departments and directors to office and/or bureau status. Environmentalists complained that the fledgling Department of Natural Resource Protection was abolished, its responsibilities reassigned to four agencies. And developers worry about the commissioners' tamperingwith the development review process, which they say had improved considerably in recent years.Despite the complaints and reservationsfrom Commissioner Julia W. Gouge, the plan was adopted, subject to review over a six-month period.

The Baltimore Jewish Times, whose parent company's assets were ordered liquidated by a bankruptcy judge Friday, will be in mailboxes and on newsstands at the end of next week, the newspaper's publisher said Saturday. But unless a new owner takes over the paper by Friday, the niche publication may never again be delivered or available for purchase in stores. Since its launch 93 years ago, the weekly journal has never missed an issue. "There are 40 people laser-focused on keeping things running for 10 days," said Andrew A. Buerger, the Jewish Times' publisher and the CEO of the paper's parent, Alter Communications.

A trustee will run Alter Communications Inc., publisher of the Baltimore Jewish Times, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge ordered late Friday after determining the company had exhausted all avenues to reorganize under Chapter 11. U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Nancy V. Alquist rejected an 11th-hour bid that Alter and its attorneys said could prevent the 93-year-old Jewish Times from folding as soon as next week. Under Alter's proposal, presented in court Friday, Washington Jewish Week publisher WJW Group LLC was prepared to make a formal offer for Alter's assets by Monday and close the deal by Wednesday in time to allow the weekly magazine to publish Friday.