Despite occasional expressions of exasperation from Comptroller Bill Henry, “emergency procurements” – contracts that bypass Board of Estimates approval and hide agency expenditures from public view for months and sometimes years – are alive and kicking at City Hall.

The process works like this:

An agency declares an emergency of such a nature that waiting for Board of Estimates approval would endanger the public welfare and applies for spending on behalf of a contractor or consultant without competitive bidding.

After the finance director internally reviews – and almost always approves – the expenditure, his office is supposed to notify the Board of Estimates of the emergency application. With notification often given long after the money was spent, the panel simply “notes” the expense as submitted without a vote.

According to Henry, the use of under-the-radar emergency contracts accelerated during the Covid pandemic and continued to expand during the first years of the Scott administration.

Complaining that at least $41 million in spending had been obscured from public view, Henry wrested a few promises of transparency from the administration in November 2023.

Most important was the concession that the finance department “should make reasonable efforts to submit a report through the Board of Estimates Submit Portal within 45 days after the approval of the director of finance.”

Four months later, after The Brew reported that a $50 million consultant contract was hidden as an emergency procurement at the Back River Waste Water Treatment Plant, City Administrator Faith Leach pledged to curb the practice.

“I act to mitigate all emergency procurements as much as possible,” she told the board.

Today the Board of Estimates is set to note two emergency contracts that can be pieced together by scouring through city records and questioning agency officials.

They involve spending $1.5 million for asbestos and related testing that doesn’t meet the “imminent public threat” threshold, according to the city’s deputy budget director, and $1.9 million to a company that received an “emergency extension” to a emergency procurement contract after it was underbid by another firm.

UPDATE: Approved Without Discussion

Mayor Brandon Scott, Comptroller Bill Henry and City Council President Zeke Cohen today “noted” the two emergency contracts without comment.

“Members did not have questions about moving them to the routine” agenda, BOE Clerk Celeste Amato announced at the start of the meeting, saying this was done “to save us all some time.”

The decision precluded questions to the agencies about the contracts or an open discussion by the board of the merits of the procurements.

A Big Contract for a Small Firm

Environmental Health Consultants LLC is a small Baltimore hazardous waste testing firm that’s gotten $475,000 from the Department of Housing and Community Development since 2022, according to the city’s Open Checkbook portal.

Now DHCD has upped the ante to up to $1.5 million, declaring that a public emergency exists requiring the company’s services.

“These services include environmental assessments, asbestos testing, contractor monitoring, on-call consulting and limited structural engineering, all essential to both planned operations and emergency responsiveness,” says an April 9, 2026 Emergency Procurement Request by Deputy Housing Commissioner Wendi Redfern.

Rubbish, countered Matthew Rappaport, deputy budget director and the city’s expenditure budget manager, in a response on Workday on April 14:

“My recommendation on this item is that it’s not an emergency procurement pursuant to the Charter requirement of imminent danger to public health and welfare. And it is new (therefore not an administrative emergency prompted by a previous action).” He also noted that under the Workday system, “I don’t have any option other than to submit” an approval of the contract.

Under the Workday system, “I don’t have any option” than to approve the emergency contract, says the deputy budget director.

City Administrator Leach didn’t address Rappaport’s objections, but simply wrote on Workday “Faith Leach: Approve” on April 22.

This was followed by a final OK by Finance Director Michael Moiseyev on May 1.

Environmental Health Consultants said that company founder Kamau McAbee and a team of certified industrial hygienists, environmental scientists and a field assistant would devote 11,584 hours to the contract (at a cost of $433,438) and conduct $220,000 worth of asbestos PLM (Polarized Light Microscopy) testing for the city.

Along with an allowable 100% overhead rate and 10% profit, the company’s price summary came out to exactly $1,500,000.

Squatters Cited

After speaking to Deputy Commissioner Redfern, DHCD spokesperson Tammy Hawley said the company’s work would specifically center on 2565 Pennsylvania Avenue, a warehouse that has been vacant and deemed “unfit for human habitation” since at least August 2015, when the city issued the first of many housing and zoning violation notices that have gone unheeded by the building’s owner, Penn-North Square Inc., and the holder of a $411,000 mortgage note, Warshaw One LLC.

Woda-Cooper Cos., a developer, was supposed to buy the lot in 2021 and construct a four-story affordable housing building. But that never happened.

We asked the housing department why the contract was set up as an emergency procurement rather than a normal contract.

“The existing contract expired and there was pending work that needed to be completed, not allowing time for a normal contracting process,” Hawley wrote.

Asked the source of the imminent danger to public health and safety, Hawley said that trespassing squatters and drug users are an issue.

“2565 Pennsylvania Avenue is currently in and contributing to the open-air drug market, and trespassing is a frequent occurrence,” she replied. “It is not uncommon for the unhoused and drug users to trespass and use drugs on site. We have had the building vacated and boarded many times. The building is a safety hazard and will remain until development can occur.”

DHCD has “no specific development plans at this time,” Haley wrote. But it needs an “environmental consultant specifically for the City acquisition of 2565. Working with the consultant and MDE [Maryland Department of the Environment] will position the City to receive Inculpable [Person] status when it takes title,” she explained.

A spokesperson for MDE said the property has not yet applied for an Inculpable Person status, which is available to participants in MDE’s Voluntary Cleanup Program. The program protects applicants who are not responsible for past contamination, but would require the city to assess and remediate existing contamination at the property.

High Bidder Wins Emergency Extension

The second emergency procurement to be noted today by the Board of Estimates involves the prior and expected payments of nearly $4 million to One Call Concepts Locating Services between June 2025 and June 2027 for underground utility locating services.

Since the Covid pandemic, the Department of Public Works had employed One Call, a Hanover, Md.-based company, to survey and mark electric, gas, fiber optic and sewer lines under city streets and sidewalks prior to construction work that could potentially damage or disrupt utility services.

The contract was issued as an emergency procurement in June 2021 by Finance Director Moiseyev and then-DPW chief Jason W. Mitchell.

In 2025, Baltimore-based Pro Comm E.L.S. came in at the lowest price in a sealed, three-year competitive bid.

It beat out One Call by $468,000 and Triple A Locating Services by $378,000 in the three-year agreement.

For never-explained reasons, however, DPW asked the BOE to defer – and then reject – all three bids, and quietly extended the One Call emergency contract for another year.

In June, the BOE was notified that the extension had cost $1,845,507. And today the spending board is expected to “note” that the latest one-year emergency contract with One Call is expected to rise to $1,936,600.

• To contact a reporter: reuttermark@yahoo.com