We’re talking about Baltimore City Inspector General Hilton Green. He’s the lone fraud patrol in a city turning out to be rife with it. We already know two city employees ripped out copper wire from City Hall for $50,000. Thanks to him another was found guilty last month of 20 counts of forgery and two counts of felony theft for writing checks worth more than $5,000 to herself from the city’s War Memorial Fund. And then there are all the bogus parking tickets agents wrote to unsuspecting motorists.
Green says there’s more. Lots more. “Honestly, I am shocked at what I am finding,” he said.
We’re not. But at a time when tax revenue is declining, the city should be pouring efforts into recovering stolen property and auditing each department for waste and fraud.
Next month 12 more employees from different city agencies will be assigned to the Inspector General’s office to help with investigations — tripling his current staff to 18 people. We’d like to know who they are to ensure conflicts of interest won’t impede investigations. But this is great news. The city has 21,000 employees. It could use more than the current six dedicated to ensuring they are following the rules.
Green juggles a bevy of investigations that could potentially return hundreds of thousands of dollars to the city treasury and preventing millions more from being stolen in the first place. One probe includes analyzing recipients of low-income housing assistance for lying about their income to win aid. He noted one correctional officer was recently convicted in federal court for misstating her income and subleasing her housing unit out to someone else while living in Baltimore County in a home she bought. She was ordered to turn over $40,000 to the city.
Green is also investigating more check cashing fraud and why city property is being sold to junkyards.
He can’t do that alone. Those 12 extra employees will help, as will the city controller’s office initiating investigative audits. But the city would be well served by beefing up his office so that it can, like the General Assembly’s Department of Legislative Services, regularly audit city agencies and publish reports of their financial performance online so that taxpayers can access them easily. Too often those reports are ignored by our state legislators, but they are the best way to hold agencies accountable and make government transparent.
