The general manager of the water utility that serves Montgomery and Prince George’s counties will leave the agency at the end of next month, after Prince George’s utility commissioners voted as a bloc to end his tenure when his contract expires in February.
Andy Brunhart, who served the Navy for 30 years and who some commissioners say was brought in to restore the integrity of an agency troubled by charges of contract cronyism, took charge of the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission in February 2005.
The three Prince George’s County commissioners who sat on the utility’s board in August 2007 voted en masse at that time not to extend Brunhart’s contract during a closed meeting. WSSC employees, however, were only formally notified of the decision a few weeks ago. Two Montgomery County commissioners backed keeping Brunhart at the helm of the WSSC, but the decision to extend his contract required a minimum of four votes, per procedural rules.
“He did a tremendous job as a change agent, which is what the board asked him to be,” former Montgomery County Commissioner Sandra Allen, who voted to renew Brunhart’s contract, told The Examiner. “I am saddened and distressed as a ratepayer to see the good governance and effective management he provided take a backseat to politics.”
Juanita Miller, one of the Prince George’s commissioners who voted Brunhart out, said she respected his work but had “issues in terms of his communications with me.”
“Sometimes it seemed there was a lack of respect for the commission’s authority,” Miller said.”I saw him creating divisiveness between the two counties.”
Brunhart’s time with the agency was marked with media coverage of high-profile issues like the firing of the WSSC’s entire information technology department and his tangling with Prince George’s commissioners who sought control of the WSSC’s Small, Local, Minority Business Enterprise program, which some worried could lead to contract kickbacks.
“We hired him in part because we felt comfortable he would maintain a high moral and ethical standard, and he took that to be very, very important in the execution of his position,” Allen said.
