Prince George’s County officials are starting to determine what can be done with recommendations proposed by an ethics task force, but the measures are not expected to be implemented for at least a year. The task force presented its final report to County Executive Rushern Baker and Council Chairwoman Ingrid Turner, D-Bowie, in June.
Kurt Schmoke, a former Baltimore mayor and chairman of the task force, said he hasn’t heard any updates on the county’s progress since handing them over the executive and chairwoman.
It will take time to implement some of the recommendations, Schmoke said, which include creating an inspector general, strengthening the county’s ethics board, and creating a whistleblower hot line to report waste and fraud.
The county
Office of Management and Budget also must find funding and staff for the recommendations, discussions that will have to wait for the fiscal 2013 budget talks. The inspector general’s office would be a new expense, and the Board of Ethics, which currently has no budget or staff, would need to be overhauled.
Baker’s staff has established a working group to review the county’s financial and legal options, and plan to begin meeting with the County Council during the August recess to determine which recommendations may be implemented, according to Brad Frome, Baker’s deputy chief of staff.
“The recommendations are just that, recommendations,” Frome said. “We have to operationalize them. Some of these things are strong recommendations for what to do, but when you get into the actual mechanics of how government operates, there’s a lot of work to do.”
Schmoke said the board never asked the county for a report back on the recommendations, but had hoped some less expensive ideas, such as the whistleblower hot line, could be set up quickly.
A new hot line could possibly be established by the end of the year, Frome said, though there is no timeline for implementing any of the report’s ideas.
Other recommendations will take more effort.
“From a financial point of view, there’s some big ticket items and small ticket items there,” Schmoke said. “They
ought to take the time to be thoughtful and get it right.”
The task force vice chairman, former Prince George’s Circuit Court Judge William Missouri, was recently hired by the Baker administration as a senior adviser, a move Schmoke said could be a step toward implementing the recommendations.
