The Baltimore County Council approved a $1.2 billion contract in April for Republic Services to haul commercial garbage from the county’s three trash facilities and dispose of it in landfills in Little Plymouth and Richmond, Virginia. The contract began July 1 and can run for up to 20 years, according to fiscal notes. The company also transports and disposes of trash from Harford County, with whom Baltimore County has had a long-standing disposal agreement. 

Council Chair Izzy Patoka bristled at the price tag, calling it the “biggest contract we’ve seen,” but voted with five council members to approve it April 1. Republic Services’ competitor, Waste Management (WM), which previously handled county trash with Republic and incinerator-operator Wheelabrator Technologies, is now challenging that contract, according to documents obtained by The Baltimore Sun via a Maryland Public Information Act request.

WM argues that the county gave the two firms, who were the only bidders, “disparate treatment” and that Baltimore County acted “capriciously and arbitrarily” by refusing to negotiate with WM and instead awarding a contract to  Republic, according to redacted bid protest documents and letters dating back to last fall. 

Patoka said he was unaware of WM’s contract challenge until The Sun informed him. He said bid protests were “not unheard of” and that the Maryland Board of Public Works often fielded contract disputes when he was a Baltimore City and state employee. Baltimore County Department of Public Works spokesperson Ron Snyder said it was the first solid waste bid protest the agency had received. 

According to the documents, Baltimore County was poised last January to award  part of the contract to WM, which previously processed county trash alongside Republic and Wheelabrator, the city incinerator that also handles some of Baltimore County’s trash. WM’s contract with Baltimore County ended June 30. Wheelabrator’s current contract, which guarantees the county give the company 215,000 tons annually for processing, ends in 2026. 

A WM executive said the county did not respond to its follow-up communications and notified it only in late March that it was essentially granting Republic an exclusive contract to process and transport Baltimore County’s commercial trash. WM filed a bid protest four days after the council approved the contract. 

Until WM’s contract ended in June, it handled commercial trash at two county facilities, in White Marsh and Cockeysville.

The Republic contract is expected to generate $142.4 million in revenue for Baltimore County over 20 years via a $125 per ton disposal fee levied on commercial customers, according to fiscal notes.

Watchdogs have previously scrutinized Baltimore County’s trash practices. In June, Inspector General Kelly Madigan cited a waste hauler for defrauding the county of nearly $230,000. 

WM spokesperson Lisa Kardell said the company was “disappointed” with Baltimore County’s decision to sever its “long-standing relationship” which dates back to 2010. 

“We believe negotiations were ended prematurely, and we did not receive the same negotiating options as the other bidder,” she said in an email. 

A person who answered Republic’s media email declined to comment.

In an email, Snyder said the agency used its “established process” for soliciting competitive bids.

Bid negotiations

WM and Republic are the largest waste firms in North America, generating a combined $134 billion in revenue in 2023, according to federal business filings. They collectively operate 578 transfer stations in the U.S. and Canada. Both companies regularly donate to county politicians, including Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. 

Baltimore County appeared to unilaterally award the contract to Republic while increasing the fees Harford County must pay to transport its waste. Under the July 1 contract, Harford County pays $125 per ton to dispose of its garbage in Baltimore County facilities, an increase from July 2023 when the Harford County Council voted to raise the fees it pays Baltimore County to $117 from $72, citing higher transportation and disposal costs Baltimore County was incurring to transport Harford County’s trash.

Under the terms of its intergovernmental agreement, Baltimore County is supposed to notify Harford County and give it a chance to “provide input” when negotiating with potential trash haulers.

Harford County spokesperson Matthew Button said the county did not take an “active” role in Baltimore County’s negotiations with Republic but did not respond to follow-up questions. Harford County Attorney Jefferson Blomquist did not respond to a request for comment.

WM and Republic submitted proposals when Baltimore County opened the bidding process last fall. On Dec. 4, WM submitted its “best and final offer” and said it was willing to negotiate on certain issues. Those items were redacted in the documents, and Kardell did not respond to a question about what the company took issue with.

Baltimore County appeared poised to award part of the contract to WM, according to a Jan. 10 letter WM Maryland finance director Michael Magee sent Baltimore County senior buyer Scott Mitcherling.

“Thank you for the letter communicating Baltimore County’s intent to award [WM] the services at Eastern Sanitary Landfill,” Magee wrote. “However, WM is not able to accept the terms and conditions as currently proposed. WM requests the opportunity to directly discuss options to draft and finalize agreeable terms in the award.”

WM said Baltimore County did not respond until March 27, telling the company it was awarding Republic the entire contract. WM’s attorneys wrote to Mitcherling on April 5, calling the county’s decision “irrational.” They said the Virginia landfills Republic contracted with to offload trash did not have enough capacity to accommodate the full 20-year contract. WM also claimed Republic did not have a contract with a minority- or woman-owned business to comply with a subcontractor clause. 

“WM was obligated … to receive the same treatment by the county into negotiating acceptable terms and conditions that was afforded to Republic but was not,” wrote Edwin Childs and Jason Vespoli of law firm McGuireWoods. 

On April 17, Mitcherling said the county was “not willing” to negotiate with WM, and that the landfills Republic contracted with had enough life span, citing the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. Republic also met the subcontracting requirement, Mitcherling said. 

“The county appreciates the time and effort WM put forth in preparing their proposal, but for the reasons stated above, the county’s decision to award the entire [request for proposal] to [Republic] stands,” Mitcherling wrote. 

Vespoli and Childs appealed April 29, which Baltimore County procurement and logistics services chief Rosetta Butler denied June 3. 

“In conclusion, after a comprehensive review of your protest and the evaluation process, I have determined that the award of the Transport & Disposal Services contract to Republic was conducted fairly and in accordance with all applicable regulations and guidelines,” Butler wrote. 

It’s unclear whether WM will take further action; Kardell did not respond to a question about whether the company was considering legal action.

Scrutinizing trash haulers

In June, Madigan said a commercial hauler defrauded the county of $225,000 by reporting all of its garbage as residential waste in order to evade a $100 tipping fee on every ton of commercial trash it dropped off at the White Marsh landfill. 

The Sun identified the hauler as Ruppert Sanitation. Baltimore County spokesperson Erica Palmisano said Public Works severed the Ruppert contract Aug. 9 and gave one of its routes to Eagle Transfer Services. Jack Haden, Eagle Transfer’s owner, was the subject of an inspector general complaint in June 2022. Former Solid Waste bureau chief Michael Beichler said then-Public Works director D’Andrea Walker advanced Haden’s application for a private transfer station days after Haden threw a fundraiser for Olszewski. 

Beichler said he opposed Haden’s plan because the private transfer station would have cost the county millions of dollars in annual revenue. Now retired, Beichler publicly identified himself earlier this year when he opposed Walker’s appointment as county administrative officer.

Walker and Olszewski, who is running for Congress, denied wrongdoing. The council shelved Haden’s application shortly after Beichler’s complaint came to light.

“The next step for WM would be through the court process,” Palmisano said.

After completing work on the station’s exterior this spring, development group Penn Station Partners estimated that the next phase of construction would cost more than what Amtrak had committed. Citing the gap in costs, Amtrak ordered the developers to temporarily stop work on the project in late April, according to a letter obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a public records request.

The letter released by Amtrak does not specify the developer’s updated cost predictions, and an Amtrak spokesperson did not say how large the initial funding gap was.

“We continue to coordinate closely with Penn Station Partners to advance this important program,” said W. Kyle Anderson, an Amtrak spokesperson.

Representatives from Beatty Development Group and Cross Street Partners, which together make up Penn Station Partners, did not return requests for comment.

Representatives from Beatty Development Group and Cross Street Partners, which together make up Penn Station Partners, did not return requests for comment.

Amtrak initially refused to release the May 6 letter, citing a provision of the Freedom of Information Act that exempts “trade secrets” and certain financial information from being released. The quasi-public corporation later released documentation after The Sun appealed that decision.

The letter gives an inside look at the ongoing dispute between Amtrak and the private development group, as well as the decision to pause work, referencing failed negotiations between Amtrak and the development group after receiving the higher-than-expected cost estimates.

In the letter, National Passenger Railroad Corporation leadership said that despite negotiations, Penn Station Partners “has indicated it wants Amtrak to solely issue” the stop work order “rather than enter into a mutually acceptable agreement.”

“Amtrak commits to [Penn Station Partners] that it will work in good faith to help resolve this issue and understands that [the development group] will do the same,” Barney E. Gray, who was then Amtrak’s assistant vice president for major stations, wrote in the letter. Gray, who could not be reached for comment, left that post in June, according to his LinkedIn page.

The letter ordered Penn Station Partners to “temporarily cease all work” on the project in order to “mitigate against any unnecessary expenditures” while Amtrak and the partnership “work to understand and resolve this situation.” The development group was still permitted to continue work on the exterior of the station’s headhouse, as well as some necessary work on restoring parapet stone, according to the letter.

But the monthslong cost dispute represents one of the first major hurdles since construction began on the long-awaited project to refurbish the 1911 rail station, touted by officials as a public-private partnership that would bolster both the city’s flagship train station and the Station North neighborhood.

The development partnership was picked by Amtrak in 2019 for the investment of up to $600 million to transform the area around Penn Station and complete improvements to the building, which saw its last major renovation four decades ago. The standstill came shortly after the Penn Station revitalization project reached a milestone of completing the historic structure’s exterior facade as well as a new boarding platform.

Meanwhile, some of the rail agency’s Baltimore-area projects have also faced resistance — more so from the outside. West Baltimore residents have lashed out at plans to replace the Baltimore & Potomac Tunnel, a 150-year-old underground path near Penn Station that has long been a bottleneck for Amtrak and MARC trains, with concerns of pollution and structural racism. And, an effort boosted by a rail startup has sought to upend Amtrak’s ongoing work to demolish a series of 1866 bridge piers as the federal rail corporation builds a new bridge over the Susquehanna River.

“It’s possible that he’s in there and he’s sitting at the bar,” a Tulsa Police officer can be heard saying as officers gathered outside Los Dos Amigos Sports Bar in Tulsa around 10:45 p.m. June 14.

The video, released to The Baltimore Sun by Tulsa Police following a public information request, shows officers walk into a largely empty bar, approach three men and lead 23-year-old Victor Martinez-Hernandez outside, where they handcuffed him.

Morin, a 37-year-old Bel Air mother of five, was found dead in a wooded area adjacent to the Ma & Pa Heritage Trail in Bel Air last August. Police found her body the next day in the woods near the trail. Morin had been beaten to death and sexually assaulted, detectives wrote in charging documents for Martinez-Hernandez.

In the video, Martinez-Hernandez, originally from El Salvador, at first tells officers his name is Juan Carlos and he doesn’t have a cellphone or ID. Using a photo, officers identify him by his teeth, and another man outside the bar hands an officer a cellphone that Martinez-Hernandez confirms is his and provides the passcode. In the video, Martinez-Hernandez was wearing a long-sleeve yellow shirt, a hat and sunglasses as police took his picture and asked him whether he is from El Salvador.

“They tracked him. He’s been in [Los Angeles], Miami, Maryland, New York,” an officer can be heard saying in the video after Martinez-Hernandez is led into the back of a police car.

About 45 minutes after he is first handcuffed, Martinez-Hernandez is driven to a jail, where a Spanish-speaking officer talks with him before he is led away.

Martinez-Hernandez was extradited to Maryland on June 20 and charged with first- and second-degree murder; first- and second-degree rape; third-degree sex offense; and kidnapping. He is being held without bail in the Harford County Detention Center and has three court hearings scheduled for October.

The firefighter had started asking in 2018 to transfer two years from his previous time in the city to his county pension, but officials repeatedly turned him down until his lawyer successfully got a settlement after he threatened to sue the county.

John Grason Turnbull III of the Turnbull Brockmeyer Law Group is soliciting claims from county firefighters who believe they were not properly informed of a deadline to transfer prior time from other jurisdictions to their county pensions. Claims evaluations are often the first step before a class action lawsuit is filed; no litigation has yet been filed against the county.

In a statement to The Sun, Turnbull said “numerous” first responders have retained his firm as counsel.

“There is a clear pattern that the county inadequately and inconsistently notified our first responders of the ability to bring time into the retirement system from prior employment,” he said. “We have requested specific documentation from the county and will continue to sign new clients pending further investigation. We need to take care of our first responders.”

County spokesperson Sean Naron declined to comment, citing potential litigation. 

The county retirement system contains $1.8 billion in assets and maintains past and current county employees’ benefits and pensions. A board of trustees oversees the system. Its chair, Mike Day, did not respond to a request for comment.  

The retirement system has come under scrutiny in the month since The Sun reported that the county paid $83,675 in 2020 to a firefighter whom officials previously denied paying because he missed a deadline by years to transfer prior service credits to his county pension. The firefighter, Philip Tirabassi, is the brother of John Tirabassi, a friend and high school classmate of Olszewski. 

When he began trying to add service credits to his county pension in 2018, Philip Tirabassi said he was not informed of a 1991 deadline to transfer that time when he switched jobs from Baltimore City to Baltimore County. Multiple budget officials and county attorneys told him he was not entitled to add the extra time, which would have boosted his county pension. 

County attorneys eventually agreed to pay him $83,675, according to a May 2020 settlement. A former county official has since filed a lawsuit to release records of the settlement under the Maryland Public Information Act. 

Olszewski, a congressional candidate, said the county settled with Tirabassi to avoid further litigation after his attorney, Jay Miller, threatened to sue if his client did not receive his settlement. Multiple members of the administration said that the arrangement violated state and local pension law. 

The County Council, which has largely remained silent, was initially uninformed at the time of Tirabassi’s settlement because a county official listed the recipient as “Philip Dough” in a check registry provided to the council at the time.

The three Republican members of the County Council have since called for Inspector General Kelly Madigan to investigate, but bucked the state GOP’s demand for Olszewski to step aside. Olszewski, a Democrat, has not been officially accused of or charged with any impropriety. 

Madigan has refused to confirm or deny an investigation. In November, voters will decide whether to enshrine her office into law.

The council began its search for an interim county executive last week. 

Miller said via email the settlement was not secret, nor did Olszewski “do any favors for my client.”

“I do not know why the county subsequently chose to keep our agreement ‘secret’ or hide it by changing Phil’s last name to (Dough),” Miller wrote. “But those decisions had nothing to do with my client or me.”

Part of Tirabassi’s settlement included a confidentiality agreement, which forbids him from discussing details, including with his union, the International Association of Fire Fighters Local 1311, or its president, John Sibiga. 

Sibiga said in an interview that the union had met with its labor attorneys “about four years ago” when news of Tirabassi’s settlement first broke. The union opted not to move forward with any legal action on the advice of its lawyers. 

“It would have benefited a few (members), but not many,” Sibiga said of potential action against the county. 

He said he believed Baltimore County had properly notified firefighters of the deadline to transfer their service time, and said the union meets with all new incoming firefighter recruits to inform them of their ability to transfer time if they have prior service from other jurisdictions. 

Last year, IAFF Local 1311 accused the county of fostering a “toxic work environment” and voted a show of “no confidence” in top fire department officials. Despite that, the union has donated $20,300 to Olszewski’s state campaign fund since 2006, according to campaign finance reports. 

That means those officers, investigated for misconduct involving members of the public, could not be disciplined by the city. State law sets the deadline for disciplinary action in those cases at one year and one day past the date of the initial complaint.

An internal city document obtained by The Baltimore Sun through a Maryland Public Information Act request lists 20 cases that the Office of Equity and Civil Rights says it received past expiration. The city office supports the Administrative Charging Committee and other police oversight bodies through its police accountability division.

Fifteen of those 20 were received on a single day in mid-April, the document shows, and the majority of those 15 were more than 100 days past the deadline for administrative charges.

Baltimore Police, in response, provided its own spreadsheet of the 20 cases, which in almost all instances listed different dates for when the investigations were sent to the Administrative Charging Committee and sometimes different expiration timelines. The department offered no explanation for why its information differed from the city’s.

According to BPD’s information, eight cases were sent to the charging committee past the deadline.

Police spokeswoman Lindsey Eldridge cited a previous department statement in response to a review by the consent decree monitoring team that found the quality of misconduct investigations was “markedly” improving, even though they are still taking too long. (BPD has been operating under a federal consent decree since 2017 after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found a pattern of unconstitutional policing.)

“We have vastly improved the quality of these investigations and acknowledge that there is more work to be done, and these changes take time,” the statement said.

Neither document contains details about the types of misconduct cases, the recommended discipline or what caused the delays. Cases sent to the charging committee involve members of the public but could vary widely from uses of force to harassment to abusive language.

The city Office of Equity and Civil Rights document shows one case was expired by one day when it was received by the staff supporting the Administrative Charging Committee, while others were expired by up to 278 days.

The Sun previously reported concerns that members of the civilian body had about Baltimore Police regularly turning over cases too close to deadlines, forcing them to hastily schedule meetings and squeeze hours of body camera footage into their free time. Members also raised concerns about how the tight turnarounds hinder their ability to fully vet police investigations or request further materials.

The city subsequently said it is taking steps to remedy the issue by attempting to streamline the process.

Under a plan implemented earlier this year, the Baltimore Police Department is sharing case materials for investigations within 30 days of expiration, even if police haven’t completed their probe; is sharing a spreadsheet that lists cases 30, 60 and 90 days from expiration; and is making a staff member available for questions at charging committee meetings, including about officers’ disciplinary histories.

Ray Kelly, a community policing advocate and member of the Administrative Charging Committee, estimated this week that on top of the expired cases, BPD sent at least 50 others within a week of their expiration dates so far this year. The persistent issue, he said, risks compromising community trust and legitimacy.

“We don’t have these mechanisms because our police department was great. It’s because they were the worst,” said Kelly, who is also the executive director of the Citizens Policing Project. “We have to put everything into rebuilding that trust, before we can move forward with actual collaboration.”

David Rocah, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU of Maryland, said the group had predicted the strict one-year statute of limitations would have this result and warned against including it in the police reform law passed in 2021. He called it a “travesty” that misconduct cases are being disposed of in this way.

“These cases should be determined on the merits,” Rocah said. “There should be substantive investigation and conclusion about whether the misconduct occurred, not administrative dismissals because we couldn’t do it in time.”

Kelly brought the Baltimore committee’s concerns to the statewide Police Training and Standards Commission that governs police certification and training, seeking statewide standards for when investigations are completed and sent to charging committees.

At the commission’s July 10 meeting, it voted to craft a survey to send to charging committees and law enforcement agencies across Maryland to gauge how widespread the issue of delayed investigative files is, or whether it’s isolated to a few jurisdictions.

The commission members, who include police leaders, prosecutors and others, expressed alarm at Kelly’s description of cases being delivered days before their expiration, or even after the expiration date.

Kelly, who also sits on the commission, said the city’s charging committee received a folder of expired cases from Baltimore Police.

“The cases that expired are truly concerning to me and I think every chief in this room,” said Maryland State Police Superintendent Roland Butler, who chairs the Police Training and Standards Commission. “You don’t want people falling through the cracks and evading this kind of [administrative] action.”

Some members argued that if Baltimore was the only jurisdiction facing the issue, it would be unfair to create statewide regulations around when cases are sent to charging committees. Butler and others urged the importance of gathering data to understand whether it was a localized issue.

“I hear what you’re saying. Because it’s not in your shop, it’s not in my shop, it doesn’t mean that as a body we shouldn’t put our heads together and address it,” Butler said to one sheriff balking at a statewide solution to what could be a local concern.

Zenita Hurley, a representative from the state Office of the Attorney General, suggested at the July meeting that the commission require agencies to inform the commission of the number of cases that were turned over close to expiration and to explain why they had taken so long.

“Right now, we don’t quite know how many cases are being delayed because there’s a criminal investigation or because there was a conflict in the investigating agency or because they’re overwhelmed because of low staff,” Hurley said. “But if we collect the data and require that the agency both give us the numbers and explain any outliers … then we could use that information to develop recommendations.”

Rocah agreed that understanding the reasons why cases took so long is important. He said the law needs to be reformed in the next session; he supports creating an exception for the expiration deadline for cases with parallel criminal investigations and potentially for those where a civil lawsuit has been filed. He also said the expiration deadline should not apply for the 30-day window for consideration by the charging committees.

The public wants “timely investigations,” Rocah said, but that requires the police department to adequately staff its investigative unit to handle the volume.

“If they’re not, then that police department simply cannot say that it is taking misconduct seriously,” Rocah said. “If you don’t staff the unit that investigates misconduct adequately to conduct the investigation within the time allowed by law, then that by definition means you don’t take it seriously. Period, end of discussion.”

Separate from the state law that sets the year-and-a-day deadline, Baltimore Police are required under the city’s policing consent decree with the federal government to complete investigations within 90 days. The department also is not meeting that mark.

Deputy Commissioner Brian Nadeau, who oversees the Public Integrity Bureau that investigates misconduct, said last month that it takes 136 days on average to complete an investigation.

Nadeau previously said the Public Integrity Bureau handled 1,475 cases last year, roughly half of which involved members of the public and fell under the Administrative Charging Committee’s purview. He also said staffing shortages are hindering efforts to speed investigations, despite hiring civilian investigators and adding a second captain to help speed commanders’ review.

While the consent decree monitoring team’s recent report found improvement in the investigation, it also warned that the investigations needed to be completed more quickly.

Kelly believes there should be best practices that Maryland requires all police agencies to achieve, in the form of a deadline for when investigations are completed and shared with charging committees.

As it stands, the law requires charging committees to adjudicate cases within 30 days of receiving a completed police investigation, but there is no timeline for when police must provide it.

The whole process, Kelly said, is “controlled completely at the discretion of the police department.”

“If they give us the investigation two or three weeks before it expires, we don’t really have an opportunity to do a real microscopic review of the investigation or request more information,” Kelly said. “We definitely can’t subpoena anybody with a month left before expiration. That process is completely at the behest of the police department.”

More than half a billion opioid pills permeated the Baltimore area between 2006 and 2019 as pharmaceutical companies targeted doctors with aggressive marketing campaigns, underplayed their products’ addictiveness and failed to block suspiciously large orders of painkillers, according to a trove of court records made public as part of the city’s lawsuit against some of America’s top drug companies.

The resulting glut of opioids reversed hard-won reductions in heroin overdose deaths and created a new generation of opioid users who overwhelmed the city’s resources, the lawsuit claims. Overdose deaths in the city began climbing to devastating new highs, quadrupling between 2011 and 2017, for example.

The Baltimore Sun reviewed thousands of pages of court records and used a massive database of drug sales transactions compiled by The Washington Post to assess how prescription opioids and the companies that peddled them contributed to the crisis.

The evidence reveals an untold story: Millions upon millions of legal opioids inundated the city and Baltimore County as pharmaceutical sales representatives singled out the highest-prescribing doctors for advertising, cracked jokes about the growing addiction crisis and minimized the potential for addiction.

Sales staff from Janssen, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary, created a “March Madness” style bracket using Baltimore physicians instead of basketball teams for a campaign to boost opioid prescribing.

Doctors who prescribed large quantities of opioids were nicknamed “whales” that the sales team wanted to “own.” Some physicians targeted for intense opioid marketing would go on to be criminally charged.

The owner of a Baltimore County pharmacy that dispensed nearly 20 million pain pills over 14 years testified that a representative from the major drug distributor McKesson did not seem concerned about the diversion of opioids.

“Absolutely not,” the owner said during a deposition in November. “The salesman congratulated me.”

The drug company defendants have asked a judge to throw out the lawsuit. A hearing on those motions for summary judgment is scheduled for Monday. If the lawsuit survives, a 12-week trial is set to begin in September. The companies argue that they followed the law, providing FDA-approved opioids to licensed pharmacies after doctors wrote prescriptions for their patients. They also fault the city for not identifying specific orders of opioids that led to harm.

“Manufacturers lack control after the medications are sold to distributors; distributors lack control after the medications are distributed to pharmacies and other dispensers; and all of the defendants lack control after the medications are dispensed to patients,” the companies’ attorneys wrote in a joint filing.

“Some of the largest, most powerful pharmaceutical companies in the world — flooded our city with millions of pills in pursuit of profits, with no regard for the lives they would ultimately destroy.” — Mayor Brandon Scott said in a statement.

In all, more than 250 million pain pills entered Baltimore City from 2006 to 2019, and more than 400 million came to Baltimore County. The data, filtered by The Post, includes only oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, which made up most of the market — or roughly three-quarters of all dosage units in Maryland for the time period.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott described the lawsuit as an effort to get justice for Baltimoreans who suffered because of the city’s opioid overdose epidemic.

“Baltimore had made incredible progress in addressing heroin addiction in the mid-2000s, but defendants in this case — some of the largest, most powerful pharmaceutical companies in the world — flooded our city with millions of pills in pursuit of profits, with no regard for the lives they would ultimately destroy,” Scott said in a statement.

“When we look at the status of our effort to combat opioids today, we cannot overlook the devastating impact their actions had. They need to be held accountable, and they need to be financially responsible for addressing their destruction.”

The city’s lawsuit names a number of major companies, including the OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma. Some companies, including Purdue, filed for bankruptcy, removing themselves from the litigation. Claims against CVS, Walgreens, Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal Health, AmerisourceBergen (now known as Cencora), Teva and McKesson remain in Baltimore City Circuit Court.

Data: See how prescription opioids were distributed in Maryland

Teva and Cardinal Health did not respond to requests for comment. In a statement, Cencora said it is “looking forward to sharing with the court the facts about our role in the supply chain and our long-standing commitment to fulfilling our regulatory responsibilities and doing our part to combat the opioid crisis.”

“Cencora does not determine the supply of the medications it distributes, nor do we impact demand for those medications,” the company said. “The DEA has always been responsible for setting the supply of opioid medications through its use of annual quotas, and demand is driven by the licensed physicians who write prescriptions based on their independent medical judgment. Cencora had no role in working with the DEA to set quotas, nor did we interact with physicians or patients to recommend particular medications.”

Marketing

Opioid consumption in the United States remained fairly flat for decades until the 1990s, when pharmaceutical companies and a growing pain advocacy movement began pushing for broader use of the drugs. Once reserved to treat the most serious pain, opioids were hailed as a long-term solution for chronic pain, even without strong scientific evidence that the benefits outweighed the risks.

Court records show pharmaceutical companies followed the same opioid playbook in Baltimore as they did elsewhere, aggressively marketing opioids to doctors while downplaying the chances of opioid dependence and addiction.

Cephalon, a pharmaceutical company later acquired by Teva, promoted a fentanyl lollipop called Actiq for a variety of uses, even though the drug had been approved by the FDA only for cancer patients with severe pain who were tolerant to opioids.

The company pleaded guilty in 2008 to marketing drugs, including Actiq, for off-label uses.

“Using the mantra ‘pain is pain,’ Cephalon instructed the Actiq sales representatives to focus on physicians other than oncologists, including general practitioners, and to promote this drug for many uses other than breakthrough cancer pain,” the U.S. Department of Justice wrote when it announced the plea and $425 million settlement.

Internally, Cephalon’s Baltimore sales manager joked in an email to colleagues about an article that warned Actiq was being sold illegally under the nickname “perc-a-pop” and compared doctors with concerns about drug abuse to Chicken Little, according to the court filings.

Pharmaceutical sales reps called Baltimore physicians hundreds of times, targeting what Janssen’s sales reps called “whales” — the highest prescribers — in hopes of selling more.

The companies also paid local doctors to give presentations on their products.

One doctor who received tens of thousands of dollars in speaking fees was Howard Hoffberg, the associate medical director at the Rosen-Hoffberg Rehabilitation and Pain Management Practice in Owings Mills and Towson.

Both Hoffberg and the clinic’s medical director, Norman Rosen, faced criminal charges stemming from the practice.

Rosen pleaded guilty in early 2023 to conspiracy to distribute oxycodone and received four months of home detention. According to his plea agreement, Rosen felt that “the patient was always right” and prescribed opioids in large quantities even to people who showed clear signs of abusing street drugs. When Hoffberg turned away patients for problematic behavior, Rosen often overruled him and continued treating the patients at another clinic location.

Hoffberg pleaded guilty to accepting $66,000 in kickbacks from Insys Therapeutics Inc., a drugmaker that produced an opioid called Subsys. Hoffberg received “honoraria” for participating in Insys’ speaker program, money the feds described as “bribes” to prescribe Subsys to patients. (Insys filed for bankruptcy in 2019.) He was sentenced to eight months in prison.

Before the criminal charges, the Rosen-Hoffberg clinic was a frequent target of opioid marketing by pharmaceutical sales reps, receiving hundreds of calls and visits. Hoffberg also gave paid talks for Purdue Pharma and Cephalon, according to a declaration he provided as part of the city’s lawsuit.

The clinic was widely known to have problems; patients often nodded off, experienced behavioral problems or showed other signs of opioid use disorder in the lobby of the busy practice, according to Hoffberg’s declaration.

Sales representatives who called and visited were “assertive with me and my staff and urged us to promote more and more of their opioid products,” Hoffberg wrote.

“In my experience, all these companies cared about was promoting their opioid products and making money, and they never expressed any concern about me or my practice prescribing opioids and preventing diversion,” wrote Hoffberg.

Asked for comment, Hoffberg emphasized that he was not convicted of improperly prescribing painkillers and that his practice offered treatment for opioid use disorder.

"I was never accused of illegitimately prescribing opioids," he said. "They were always prescribed in conjunction with multidisciplinary care including those that I treated for opioid use disorder."

Chronic pain patients have suffered because of lawsuits like Baltimore's, he added, because doctors are now less willing to prescribe opioids due to stigma.

"Many chronic pain patients, including those at my practice, felt victimized as a result of these litigation proceedings," he said.

Johnson & Johnson also sought to increase opioid prescribing more broadly through “unbranded marketing,” paying doctors and organizations — including the Baltimore-based American Pain Foundation — to promote opioids under the guise of patient advocacy. The foundation closed in 2012 after a ProPublica investigation revealed its extensive financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

In a statement, a Johnson & Johnson spokesperson said the company deeply sympathizes with those affected by opioid abuse and addiction.

“We will challenge the City’s claims — which have no basis in the facts or the law — and the evidence will show that Janssen did everything a responsible manufacturer of these important prescription pain medicines should do,” the statement continued.

Distribution

As opioid sales exploded across the nation and in Baltimore, the companies distributing all those pills were supposed to report suspicious orders to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

They didn’t, the city’s lawsuit argues.

Major distributors who sent millions of opioids into the city went years without reporting a single suspicious order — or never reported any at all, according to Gary Tuggle, a DEA veteran who briefly served in 2019 as an interim commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department.

At the city’s request, Tuggle used federal data to evaluate opioid orders sent to Baltimore city and county from 2006 through 2019. He calculated that between 440,000 and 645,000 suspicious orders came to the area in those years, sent by just three distributors: AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson. Tuggle included Baltimore County because city residents often use pharmacies there, according to his report.

“The defendants did not just fail to monitor, report, and stop suspicious opioid orders in Baltimore,” Tuggle wrote. “The defendants ran national suspicious order monitoring programs, and their programs were inadequate everywhere. The result was that diversion of opioids occurred around the country.”

The defendants dispute Tuggle’s findings and challenged his conclusions with their own expert reports. Tuggle and the city’s other experts declined to comment for this story because of the pending litigation.

Distributors also helped pharmacies avoid triggering opioid thresholds by warning them when they neared their limits for orders, coaching them to place small daily orders for opioids instead of large ones that could set off red flags, and raising thresholds for any reason, including “increased business,” the court filings show.

As millions of opioids spread across the country, some employees began raising concerns internally.

Walgreens pharmacists in Baltimore repeatedly asked questions about the Rosen-Hoffberg pain clinic, court records show.

“To be honest, I do not feel very comfortable with my license on the line filling for that clinic,” one wrote, according to internal emails.

In response, Walgreens had a staff doctor call the clinic. In a subsequent email, she wrote: “Great discussion with the Rosen-Hoffberg docs — we should fill their scripts!”

That was in 2016. In 2018, after the Maryland Board of Physicians reprimanded Rosen, court records show another Walgreens pharmacist emailed with concerns about filling the clinic's prescriptions. The DEA raided the clinic soon after.

A Walgreens spokesperson declined to comment, citing the litigation.

Other distributors faced enforcement actions related to their opioid sales in Baltimore. CVS paid $8 million in 2016 to settle with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland for dispensing controlled substances at its Maryland pharmacies, including oxycodone, fentanyl and hydrocodone, “in a manner not fully consistent with their compliance obligations” under the Controlled Substances Act.

In an email, a CVS spokesman noted that the 2016 settlement related to the company’s pharmacies, not the distribution operation that the city’s claim targets. CVS’ distribution centers shipped less than 1% of the prescription opioids at issue in the lawsuit, the spokesman said.

“We strongly disagree with the allegations in this lawsuit and continue to vigorously defend against them,” the spokesman said.

The distributor McKesson entered into a $13 million settlement with the DEA in 2008 for regulatory problems, including selling 3 million hydrocodone doses to Baltimore’s Newcare pharmacy without reporting the sales as suspicious. The pharmacy’s owners were arrested in 2006 and received five years in prison each for illegally selling 10 million hydrocodone pills over the internet.

McKesson was by far the largest distributor of opioids to Baltimore City between 2006 and 2019, according to The Post's database, responsible for over a third of the pills distributed.

The company settled with the DEA again in 2017, this time for $150 million. McKesson agreed that it failed to maintain effective protections against the diversion of controlled substances at several distribution centers, including one in Landover.

McKesson did not respond to a request for comment.

A 'calculated gamble'

The city and the opioid defendants offer two very different stories of Baltimore’s opioid crisis.

Baltimore had a well-known heroin problem for decades before prescription opioids became a major factor. But the city achieved declines in heroin overdoses between 1999 and 2009, a trend scholars attributed to the expansion of medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder.

By making an enormous supply of prescription opioids easily accessible, the city claims, opioid manufacturers and distributors reversed any progress Baltimore had made in addressing overdoses and made existing problems far worse.

The oversupply introduced a new cohort to opioids, either through legal prescriptions or “medicine cabinet” diversion of pills. When opioid users turned from prescription pills to cheaper and more deadly street drugs, the city argues, overdoses skyrocketed.

The defendants say their opioids had little effect on a city with a serious illicit drug problem. In court filings, the companies blamed illegal drug trade and raised questions about opioids taken from pharmacies during the 2015 unrest following Freddie Gray’s death from injuries suffered while in police custody and about officers who were investigated for stealing drugs.

“As for illicit, non-prescription opioids such as heroin, the record is replete with evidence that Baltimore City was plagued by these illegal drugs long before the rise in opioid prescribing, and that they have at all times been distributed by illegal drug trafficking organizations, not distributors,” the companies wrote in a joint filing.

The truth may be somewhere in between, said Dr. Eric Weintraub, the head of the University of Maryland School of Medicine’s Division of Addiction Research and Treatment. Baltimore had a preexisting heroin problem, but in recent years, many people began using opioids because they had access to prescription pain medicines, he said.

“It’s hard to know exactly what is the cause of the increase, but it’s clear that many individuals became dependent on illicit opioids by first using prescription pain medication,” said Weintraub, who is not involved in the city’s lawsuit.

Brendan Saloner, a professor and addiction researcher at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, estimated in an expert report for the city’s lawsuit that more than 80% of Baltimore’s opioid use disorder cases between 2010 and 2021 began with prescription opioids, not heroin. Saloner declined to comment for this story, citing the pending litigation.

The causes of Baltimore’s overdose crisis are difficult to untangle, Weintraub said. A massive supply of prescription opioids, followed by a rise in the potent synthetic opioid fentanyl, made for a deadly combination.

“I don’t think you can say that what happened in Baltimore prior to the prescription pain issue is irrelevant, but I also think it was exacerbated and compounded significantly by the prescription problem,” Weintraub said.

Baltimore’s opioid problem will be expensive to remediate, no matter the cause. The city is seeking about $11.5 billion in damages. The money would go toward a comprehensive opioid abatement program.

The lawsuit is especially significant because Baltimore rejected a $400 million opioid settlement reached by the Maryland Attorney General’s Office two years ago. Instead of joining thousands of state and local jurisdictions in the global settlement, Baltimore decided to go it alone in hopes of winning a larger sum. (A $45 million settlement announced in June with the opioid maker Allergan suggests the approach may pay off.)

The strategy comes with risk, said Bruce Poole, a Hagerstown attorney who helped handle opioid lawsuits for several Western Maryland jurisdictions.

“In this case, the city looked at their problem and took a very calculated gamble and decided to go for it,” Poole said.

If the lawsuit survives the summary judgment stage, the city could win an enormous amount at trial. If the city succeeds on its motions ahead of the trial, a jury of Baltimoreans will get to decide the outcome of the case and the defendants will have to contend with what Poole calls the “drive-by proof”: the devastation wrought by the opioid crisis that is plainly visible on the streets of Baltimore.

“If you’re a juror, I don’t know how you don’t know that this problem exists on a personal experience level,” Poole said. "You may not have had anything to do with opioids, and maybe your family hasn’t, but you still see it in the communities."

Baltimore Sun reporter Annie Jennemann contributed to this article.

Tracey Paliath, the county ethics commission’s executive director, said the connection did not appear to violate ethics rules. But it did raise concerns for Public Citizen government affairs lobbyist Craig Holman, who also said it did not appear to violate any ethics rules. Public Citizen is a nonpartisan watchdog group founded by former presidential candidate Ralph Nader.

Olszewski has said repeatedly that he does not have a “close, personal relationship” with Tirabassi. County spokesperson Erica Palmisano said in a statement Thursday that Laura Ray’s nomination to the commission was based on her credentials and her party affiliation.

“Any implication of impropriety is baseless and unfounded,” Palmisano said.

Tirabassi confirmed that Ray was a real estate agent in his office in 2020.

“Your phone call was the first time I was made aware of her being appointed to any commission, therefore I certainly didn’t recommend her,” Tirabassi told a Baltimore Sun reporter Thursday.

Olszewski initially appointed Ray in September 2020 to serve a partial term until June 2022 on the five-member Baltimore County Ethics Commission. The commission meets 10 times a year, hears ethics complaints and works to ensure county employees, officials and lobbyists file proper disclosure forms and undergo annual ethics trainings. They also can issue advisory opinions and guidance. 

The County Council unanimously approved Ray in July 2022 as a Republican representative for a three-year term ending July 1, 2025. At least two members of the commission must not be from the same political party as the county executive. Olszewski is a Democrat.

“Laura Ray was nominated for the Ethics Commission based on her credentials as an active community leader, a longtime Baltimore County Recreation and Parks volunteer, and as a member of the Republican Party,” Palmisano said in the statement to The Sun.

Asked if Olszewski was aware that Ray had worked for Tirabassi, a spokesperson said the “administration was aware that she has served as a part-time Realtor.”

Per county code, ethics commissioners must be appointed by the county executive with approval from the County Council. They must be county residents and not hold public office. Two members must also be licensed lawyers in Maryland. The ethics commission separated from the inspector general’s office in 2023 on recommendation from a county oversight commission.

Olszewski, now a congressional candidate, has touted his administration as “the most open, accessible and transparent in Baltimore County’s history,” citing his creation of its inaugural Office of the Inspector General and strengthening of lobbying rules.  

At the time of Ray’s initial appointment, the county was in negotiations with Tirabassi over a $83,675 settlement its attorneys initially agreed to pay him in May 2020. County attorneys and Tirabassi signed an agreement that month, but Tirabassi did not receive the money until December 2020. 

According to her LinkedIn and real estate listings, Ray started working in 2014 as an agent for Advance Realty Direct Inc., a real estate firm solely owned by Tirabassi until he dissolved it in December 2022, according to state business filings.

Ray started working for another realty firm the following month, in January 2023, according to her LinkedIn and broker listings. Tirabassi said Thursday that he didn’t remember when she left his office, but she was working for him in 2020.

Tirabassi, along with his younger brother John, was the broker and listing agent on three properties Olszewski and his wife bought and sold between 2016 and 2020, including the Millers Island lot where Olszewski and his wife now live. John Tirabassi is a high school classmate and personal friend of Olszewski. 

John Tirabassi is also a regional sales representative for the Peterbilt of Baltimore truck company and sold $4 million worth of dump trucks to Baltimore County between April 2023 and January. Olszewski denied knowing about the purchases. 

Ray did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. Between February 2006 and December 2023, she donated $1,740 to Olszewski’s state campaign fund, according to campaign finance records. 

According to a school yearbook, Ray graduated from Sparrows Point High School in 2000 with John Tirabassi and Olszewski. She served on the student council with the future county executive. 

In addition to being a Realtor, Philip Tirabassi was a Baltimore County firefighter until retiring in fall 2020. He agreed to an $83,675 settlement from the county in May 2020 after he asked to transfer retirement credits to his county pension, which multiple county officials said would have violated state and local pension laws.

Public Citizen’s Holman said Ray did not appear to have a conflict of interest, though there was some concern about her ability to remain impartial. 

“It’s quite clearly not a violation of any ethics rules. I do raise concerns that while she may not have been personally involved, she was an employee of someone involved in litigation against the county,” Holman said. “It raises some suspicions as to her impartiality.” 

Still, her appointment alone did not appear to be an issue, he said.

“You frequently find throughout the political process the appointment of friends into administrations,” Holman said.

He compared Olszewski’s appointment of Ray to former President Barack Obama appointing an old college friend as his ethics counselor. 

The county hired Paliath in February as its first executive director of the ethics commission, a position previously held by Inspector General Kelly Madigan. 

In an interview Thursday, Paliath called Ray a “diligent board member,” and said that she was unconcerned about the connection between Ray, Olszewski and Tirabassi. 

Ray’s role includes submitting annual financial disclosure forms, Palmisano said.

The board usually considers conflict of interest cases, such as when employees seek guidance about whether they can hold jobs outside of the county. In the time she’s known Ray, Paliath said she’s issued decisions alongside her fellow board members in a “thoughtful manner.”

County attorneys eventually agreed to settle with Phillip Tirabassi, which Olszewski said was to avoid litigation after he threatened to sue for breach of contract. Baltimore County has spent almost $316,000 on outside lawyers to shield details of that settlement from public view after a former county official filed a public records lawsuit over it in July 2021. The lawsuit is ongoing, and the county council approved spending an additional $200,000 on legal fees last month.

Political fallout

County Republicans have begun trying to make Olszewski’s ties to John and Philip Tirabassi a focus of the race for the 2nd Congressional District, which covers parts of Baltimore City, and Baltimore and Carroll counties. Olszewski faces Republican nominee Kim Klacik in the Nov. 5 general election. Olszewski is believed to be the frontrunner, boasting a large war chest and endorsements from top Democratic officials like retiring U.S. Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer, and Maryland House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones.

The Maryland Republican Party called for Olszewski’s resignation in a statement Thursday, citing reporting by The Sun on the settlement with Philip Tirabassi and the county’s purchase of dump trucks from John Tirabassi.

Characterizing the reports as “substantial allegations of corruption,” the state GOP also called for Olszewski to withdraw from his congressional race.

Olszewski’s campaign manager, Asa Leventhal, rejected those calls.

“The Maryland Republican Party continues to desperately grasp at straws to find any reason to distract voters from candidates like Kim Klacik, who back the extreme policies of Donald Trump — a convicted felon,” he said.

Olszewski’s administration could spend up to $550,000 fighting in court to shield the details of a secret settlement paid to John Tirabassi’s brother Philip, a former county firefighter, in 2020.

The county paid $4.2 million to buy 16 dump trucks between April 2023 and January 2024 from Peterbilt of Baltimore. Purchase orders obtained through a Maryland Public Information Act request list John Tirabassi, a Peterbilt regional sales representative, as the supplier contact for the Dundalk business.

A county spokesperson said Olszewski was unaware that the county had bought the trucks from Tirabassi’s company. 

In addition to the 16 trucks, which each cost between about $273,000 and $279,000, the county also bought $2,800 worth of truck parts and repairs from Peterbilt in November 2021, according to purchasing records. The trucks were purchased by the county property management office’s groundskeeping division and designed to carry bulk construction debris, according to a presentation package Tirabassi sent the county. 

John Tirabassi is the younger brother of Philip Tirabassi, a retired firefighter who Baltimore County paid $83,675 in an April 2020 settlement after he asked to transfer Baltimore City retirement credits to his county pension. The county is paying outside lawyers to defend itself against a public records lawsuit related to that settlement brought by a former county administrator, Fred Homan. 

Olszewski, who is now running for Congress, told The Baltimore Sun earlier this month that he did not have a “close, personal relationship” with Philip Tirabassi but said he was friends with John, a high school classmate. 

Public records show how Olszewski’s financial relationship with both Tirabassi brothers goes beyond county business.

John Tirabassi is one of seven people the county executive is friends with on Venmo, a mobile payment app.

Real estate listings named Phillip Tirabassi and his brother as either listing agents or brokers on two homes Olszewski and his wife bought and sold in 2019 and 2020, and on a lot the couple bought in 2016 and now live on. The Baltimore Brew news website first reported John and Philip Tirabassi’s involvement in Olszewski’s real estate transactions.

County spokesperson Erica Palmisano said Olszewski only dealt directly with John Tirabassi on the real estate transactions.

Since 2006, Philip Tirabassi, the real estate company where he works, Advance Realty, and John Tirabassi have donated a combined $3,415 to Olszewski’s state political campaign fund, according to campaign finance records. 

In an email, Palmisano called it a “mischaracterization” to say Olszewski and the Tirabassi brothers had close financial ties. She also said Olszewski was not aware of or involved with John Tirabassi’s company’s contract with Baltimore County.

The county bought the Peterbilt trucks using a cooperative contract, which underwent “the same competitive bid process that is utilized by the county,” Palmisano said. That agreement let the county procure the needed trucks sooner than if it had used other options, she said.

John and Philip Tirabassi did not respond to phone calls seeking comment Tuesday. It’s unclear if John Tirabassi earned a commission on the truck sales to the county. 

After The Sun revealed the relationship between Olszewski and Philip Tirabassi, Tirabassi’s attorney Jay Miller, who initially declined to comment, responded with a statement.

Miller wrote July 19 that he felt “compelled to respond to the false assertion that the settlement I obtained on behalf of a dedicated 30-year firefighter, Philip Tirabassi, was obtained by virtue of the fact that the county executive is a friend of my client’s brother.”

Instead, Miller said, Tirabassi’s legal team “vigorously litigated” the matter. Under the terms of the confidential settlement, Tirabassi was only paid what he had earned, without reimbursement for attorney’s fees or expenses, Miller said. 

“While your article falsely insinuates that the settlement was the result of a favoritism on the part of the county executive, the fact is that the county executive actually sought to renege on the settlement agreement by claiming that the county attorney had acted beyond the scope of his authority in negotiating the settlement,” wrote Miller, who did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

Olszewski said his administration approved the settlement to avoid more litigation after Tirabassi threatened to sue for breach of contract.

When Tirabassi first asked the county to add about two years of retirement credits from working in the city to his county pension ahead of his retirement date, multiple officials turned him down. 

Suzanne T. Berger, a then-assistant county attorney who had handled retirement cases for the county since 1996, wrote in a memorandum that the window for Tirabassi to transfer his time had closed in 1991. In what Berger called an “matter of unambiguous state law,” Tirabassi had no right to appeal, she wrote in the memo. 

When the county signed a settlement agreement with Tirabassi on April 26, 2020, Berger told County Attorney James Benjamin that the settlement violated the law and would open the retirement board up to claims costing millions of dollars for the county, according to her complaint.

Soon after, Benjamin and Pat Murray, Olszewski’s former chief of staff, told Berger on May 15 that her position in the office of law was being eliminated.

In 2022, Berger sued the county in the U.S. District Court of Maryland, saying that Baltimore County discriminated against her and fired her because of her age and gender. She said in the suit that she was assigned a less experienced male attorney to work with her on the Tirabassi case because she was seen as “unlikely to ‘go along’ with the administration’s plan to acquiesce in Tirabassi’s unlawful claim to enhanced retirement benefits.” 

Her lawsuit was dismissed and she lost an appeal in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2023.

“I felt I was pushed out because of my stance in the Tirabassi matter and the fact that I insisted on relying on the law,” Berger said in an interview Tuesday.

Palmisano said the county is “generally unable to comment on personnel matters,” but noted be that Berger’s lawsuit was dismissed.

The county’s outside lawyers have said that the April 2020 settlement was replaced by another agreement, which they said was put in writing in September 2021, after Tirabassi was paid.

Murray, who has since left the county, redirected a request for comment to Baltimore County, calling it a “personnel matter.”  

Since then, Berger has been named in Homan’s ongoing public records lawsuit against the county. The county has filed to subpoena her as a witness, according to court records.

Police described his 911 calls in court documents charging him with making false statements to officers. He was eventually convicted of two such counts and sentenced to two years of supervised probation, with the condition that he undergo mental health treatment.

But in April, after he allegedly threatened to kill his neighbor’s family with an airsoft pistol, the man’s probation agent reported to the court that he didn’t verify that he was in treatment. After he was arrested, a Baltimore County judge, at prosecutors’ request, ordered him evaluated for mental illness. Heeding the opinion of state doctors, the judge found he was too mentally ill to face charges that he violated his probation and that he presented a danger to himself or others.

On May 7, she ordered the Maryland Department of Health to admit him for psychiatric care within days. Yet the man remained until June 20 at the Baltimore County Detention Center, where correctional officials reported that detainees in the mental health unit sometimes smear feces on the walls, flood their cells and refuse daily activities, such as showers.

People with severe mental illness, accused of crimes in Maryland but deemed too sick by the courts to participate in their cases and who are considered dangerous, are languishing behind bars long beyond the 10-day deadline prescribed by state law for the health department to admit them to one of its five psychiatric facilities following a judge’s order.

It takes about 53 business days for a defendant to be admitted, the health department said. But at recent court hearings, some defendants had spent six months or more behind bars before being transferred.

The health department’s 1,056 psychiatric beds are perpetually full, with patients staying in the department’s care on average more than two years, health officials said. With a rapidly increasing number of court orders, the health department said it has a waitlist of close to 200 defendants.

Meanwhile, defendants often deteriorate in jails ill-equipped to care for their mental health, experts said.

“It’s inappropriate for individuals with serious mental illness, who are in such bad shape that those around them feel like they’re not even fit enough to go through the justice system, to languish in jails, which are some of the most nontherapeutic places that you can imagine,” said E. Lea Johnston, a professor at the University of Florida’s Levin College of Law.

Such delays are a nationwide crisis that dates to the 1960s, when the country transitioned away from institutionalizing the mentally ill in favor of community care, researchers said. But mental health care in the community never materialized, leaving sick people to deteriorate without support.

“Individuals with mental disorder are increasingly in contact with the criminal justice system. That’s a function of not having enough community mental health resources,” said Johnston, whose research focuses on mental health and criminal law. “So individuals are more symptomatic, or are openly symptomatic, and come to the attention of law enforcement, and then these individuals are arrested.”

The crisis is not new in Maryland — a Baltimore judge in 2017 held the health department in contempt of court, prompting the Maryland General Assembly to enact the law requiring the health department to admit defendants within 10 days of a judge’s order — and has only gotten worse. Frustrated judges are imposing large fines against the department.

“It’s an overwhelming problem, because the volume of competency decisions is increasing, and it’s certainly far exceeding the capacity that we have today,” Dr. Laura Herrera Scott, Maryland’s health secretary, told The Baltimore Sun.

She pointed to data showing the courts committed almost twice as many people in 2023 than in 2020. The department has added 43 beds since 2018 and none since 2021, spokespeople said.

While health officials, judges and lawmakers search for answers, defendants suffer.

‘I want my client not to die’

A Catonsville man was accused of a Baltimore carjacking in 2022, with witnesses telling officers he “appeared to be under the influence of narcotics,” police wrote in charging documents.

In April 2023, he appeared by video on the city circuit court’s mental health docket, with court doctors having found his mental illness prevented him from understanding the proceedings and assisting his defense lawyers. They also believed he posed a danger to himself or others.

Circuit Judge Gale E. Rasin deemed the man incompetent to stand trial and ordered the health department to admit him.

“You should be transferred to a hospital for treatment,” she told him. “I cannot tell you when exactly that is supposed to happen.”

Two months later, the man’s public defenders appeared before Rasin again. Their client remained in jail and was getting sicker. He weighed about 90 pounds, 35% less than the 140 police listed on his charging documents.

“He is in a fetal position in a bed. … He refused his food,” one of the public defenders, Michael Cooper, told Rasin.

Rasin read an earlier note from the jail’s behavioral health staff, which said he “was staring with a blank expression, was irritable and argumentative and had a belief he was being poisoned.”

“My only question at this point,” the man’s other public defender, Sharon Bogins Eberhart, said, “is: when is he going into a state mental health facility, as has been ordered by the court and as required by statute within 10 business days. … I just want to know when he’s going. I want my client to get better. I want my client not to die.”

Rasin questioned whether the health department was conducting “acuity checks” and whether they were working.

Every week, department clinicians check in with local detention centers to evaluate the severity of defendants’ psychiatric conditions. Those deemed most mentally ill are moved up the health department’s waitlist, health officials said. Clinicians also must try to admit the person before they serve the maximum amount of time they could legally spend in jail if sentenced.

A health department official who attended the court hearing said the Catonsville man was slated to be taken to a hospital the next day.

“This is a life-threatening situation. The system, the hospital system, it’s just broken. I think I said that five years ago,” said Rasin, the judge who held the health department in contempt in 2017.

The man was admitted to the hospital the next day. After six months, doctors determined he was competent to stand trial, but recommended that he remain in their care.

Prosecutors later dismissed the charges against him because a witness was no longer available, a state’s attorney’s office spokesman said. He added that the hospital delays can hinder prosecutions because victims and witnesses become disillusioned by the lengthy process.

A woman who answered the door in June at an address affiliated with him in online records identified herself as his aunt but declined to speak with a reporter. She said her nephew, now 31, was in a state mental hospital.

Squalid conditions and worsening waits

The Baltimore County Detention Center’s deputy director visited the Towson jail’s mental health unit before testifying at a May 8 hearing where a judge was considering fining the health department for failing to admit five defendants within 10 days.

“I get there and folks are screaming,” Hilary Siakor-Sirleaf told Circuit Judge Nancy M. Purpura.

He described how the unit’s squalid conditions, including walls painted with detainees’ excrement, strained his staff.

“Every day, my officers are cleaning,” Siakor-Sirleaf added. “They’re more like housekeepers.”

James Dills, district public defender for Baltimore County, asked Purpura to impose fines on the back of an appellate opinion that deemed such sanctions appropriate. Calling the delays a “recurring problem,” the appeals judges cited a previous appellate opinion that said “a defendant found incompetent to stand trial may not be detained ‘unless the government is taking steps to provide treatment to restore the defendant to competence.’”

Dills struggled to contain his frustration.

“The numbers aren’t changing. They’re getting worse. There’s the human side of it,” said Dills, referring to one of his clients who had been in jail for six months. “He’s still psychotic. He’s still saying the same types of things he was saying six months ago.”

Bryan Mroz, deputy secretary of the department’s health care system and operations, testified for the health department, saying fines wouldn’t bring it into compliance with the law, because it can only admit patients for the beds it has.

“Every bed in our hospital system, including those at Clifton T. Perkins, are maxed out,” said Mroz, referring to the state’s lone maximum security psychiatric hospital. “They’re all filled. And I can only admit [someone] when I discharge someone.”

He testified that the department was adding 44 beds at a Western Maryland facility and expanding capacity at Clifton T. Perkins, but explained that hospital bed capacity was only part of its strategy. The department is also adding assisted living space within its facilities to ease placing patients into step-down care.

And the department brought on social workers to help patients get the paperwork they need to receive follow-up care, testified Mroz, adding that it also was working to stand up crisis response teams across the state to divert low-level offenders from the criminal legal system.

“We’re spending millions and millions of dollars trying to solve this,” Mroz told Purpura.

Purpura began her ruling by reading from the preamble to the 2018 law that created the 10-day deadline, which described the issue as a “serious public safety risk and a violation of the United States Constitution.”

“Keeping potentially dangerous, seriously mentally ill defendants from treatment exacerbates their problems and violates their right to due process,” she read. “The crisis of delayed treatment for seriously mentally ill and incompetent defendants in Maryland has been foreseeable for many years and well documented, facilitated by a steady reduction of capacity and staff in state hospitals while the demand for forensic beds has remained constant.”

The judge ordered the department to pay $1,000 a day for defendants who had been in jail anywhere from 46 to 182 days beyond the 10-day deadline, adding up to $608,000.

‘Worst of all worlds’

In December, a 34-year-old woman experiencing homelessness asked to borrow the cellphone of an employee at a Royal Farms in Essex and became hysterical when he asked her to return it. The employee called 911.

When police arrived, they told her to leave, but she said she wanted to go to jail and pushed over several display cases, according to court documents charging her with trespass, malicious destruction of property, disturbing the peace and resisting arrest. The woman, officers wrote, “had to be physically removed out of the store.”

In court April 30, a Baltimore County judge deemed her incompetent to stand trial and dangerous, ordering her committed to the health department. She remained in jail until the department admitted her June 28, almost two months later and after the judge threatened fines.

By the time doctors find those they’re treating mentally fit to stand trial, many plead guilty, are sentenced to time served and released without connection to follow-up mental health care, said Johnston, the law professor. Those accused of low-level offenses sometimes spend more time waiting for treatment than they would if sentenced to the maximum penalty.

“What we have right now is almost the worst of all worlds,” Johnston said. “Something, almost anything, is better than that.”

How to fix this crisis depends on “whether one thinks that our criminal justice system has too large a footprint currently, whether we are over-criminalizing to begin with,” Johnston said. “If one adopts that perspective, then we shouldn’t be prosecuting petty offenses that reflect symptomatic behavior.”

That would require treating mentally ill people accused of petty crimes in a different setting.

“If you take for granted that we continue to over-criminalize, then I do think that you have to make more use of outpatient treatment — outpatient evaluation, or evaluation within the jails, and outpatient treatment and education opportunities — if you want to restore individuals’ competency,” Johnston said.

Health Secretary Herrera Scott said the multifaceted problem requires a comprehensive solution.

“There’s a lot of activity both upstream and downstream, downstream being the residential rehab programs and assisted living units for people to discharge to, but upstream like how do we prevent people from entering the judiciary,” she said in an interview.

State Del. Luke Clippinger, a Baltimore Democrat who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, agrees. He’s encouraged that stakeholders like local police and state’s attorneys, public defenders, the courts and the health department are discussing solutions. At the same time, he recognizes the urgency because of his day job as an Anne Arundel County prosecutor.

“Finding that true global solution is something I very much feel that they’re moving towards,” said Clippinger, adding that his committee would watch this closely. “We’ll have some conversations in the legislature in the next session and probably have a briefing before the next session.”

The mother of the woman who was arrested at the Royal Farms attended one of her daughter’s court hearings in June alongside a pastor from an Essex church who occasionally fed the woman.

On the courthouse steps, the mother and pastor described the woman, who was in jail at the time, as a “sweet girl” who was “very sick.”

“This mental health system is broken,” the mother said. “My daughter is suffering.”

The Sun reported Tuesday that the council had voted July 1 to pay another $200,000 to Baker-Donelson, a law firm the county has contracted with to defend itself against a public records lawsuit brought by former County Administrator Fred Homan.

Since July 2021, Homan has been seeking documents related to a $83,675 settlement the county paid retired firefighter Philip Tirabassi in 2020. Tirabassi is the brother of John Tirabassi, Olszewski’s friend and high school classmate. 

Two council members, David Marks and Council Chair Izzy Patoka, expressed concern about the relationship between Olszewski and Philip Tirabassi, and said they would discuss the Baker-Donelson contract at a later date, but did not commit to taking any concrete action. Councilmembers Wade Kach, Mike Ertel, Pat Young, and Todd Crandell did not respond to requests for comment. Patoka and Councilman Julian Jones, a Woodstock Democrat, are expected to run for county executive in 2026 to succeed Olszewski, who is seeking a Congressional seat. Neither would answer when asked if they would have approved the settlement. 

Olszewski has denied any wrongdoing. He said the county paid Tirabassi to avoid litigation after Tirabassi threatened to sue if Baltimore County backed out of an agreement to add retirement credits to his county pension. Olszewski said a former county attorney, Michael Raimondi, sent that agreement “without authorization” in January 2020. 

Raimondi declined to comment when contacted Wednesday. 

Patoka, a Pikesville Democrat, said he was unaware of Olszewski’s relationship with Tirabassi before The Sun’s article. He said he had not yet spoken with his fellow council members, but anticipated holding “informal discussions” in the coming weeks to see if there were any “proactive actions” the council could take. 

“We need to assess what the ramifications are. This is really important, and something to revisit, to see if there’s something we can do,” said Patoka. 

The council approved in a 6-0 vote without discussion to allocate an additional $200,000 for Baker-Donelson to continue defending the county against Homan’s lawsuit. The county has paid Baker-Donelson nearly $316,000 as of last month. 

Jones was not present and did not vote. 

Patoka did not answer when directly asked if he would have approved the settlement if he was county executive. He said he tried to maintain some distance with people he had “personal relationships with.” 

“If I’m county executive, I have to be concerned with my actions and concerned about optics. I’m not in that situation, and I don’t think I’d ever be in that situation,” he said of Olszewski approving a settlement to a friend’s brother. “This is Baltimore. It’s a small community, and we all know each other. If there’s no impropriety, there’s no impropriety, no matter what it looks like.”  

Olszewski, a Dundalk Democrat, has a cordial relationship with the council, which is split with four Democrats and three Republicans. This year, the council has engaged in a long-simmering political struggle with the administration over who has final authority over land-use and zoning decisions in the county, with the council vetoing some of Olszewski’s proposed legislation. 

Jones previously sponsored a law in 2020 that required the Office of Law to annually notify the council of all settlements. In an interview last week, he told The Sun he was “concerned about the amount of money” the county was paying to defend itself against Homan’s lawsuit.  

He declined to comment on Thursday, citing the ongoing litigation. When asked if he would have approved the settlement if he was county executive, Jones declined to answer.

Patoka and Jones are expected to run against each other for county executive if Olszewski wins in November. Olszewski has not said whom he would support to serve the remainder of his term, leaving the two to compete for his endorsement. In addition to bestowing his stamp of approval, he has the ability to transfer his $1.73 million in state campaign funds, which he cannot use in his federal race, to one of them or another candidate.

Young and Ertel, who are Democrats, and Kach and Crandell, who are Republicans, did not respond to requests for comment. 

Marks, an Upper Falls Republican, was unavailable for an interview. In a text message, he said he had “no insight” into Olszewski’s relationship with the Tirabassi family and “cannot recall ever meeting” Philip Tirabassi. 

“What I will say is that this request occurred in the middle of an extraordinarily busy time for the council, and I think we will be asking more questions over the coming two weeks,” Marks wrote. 

David Williams, the president of good governance group Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said the lawsuit fees came at an inopportune time when federal COVID aid is ending, the state faces budget cuts, and counties will shoulder a bigger burden of the costly Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reform plan. 

“There’s a basic problem of transparency, and taxpayers are paying for it. Everyone’s in a pinch,” he said. “I don’t know what’s more troubling, the cost or the transparency issues.” 

Olszewski has touted his administration as the most “transparent in Baltimore County’s history.” One of his first acts when first elected in December 2018 was to prevent officials from lobbying Baltimore County for one year after leaving county employment. He then created the first Baltimore County Office of the Inspector General.

His administration has clashed on a handful of occasions with Inspector General Kelly Madigan. Olszewski later sided with Madigan when Jones unsuccessfully tried to soften her investigative powers with a series of bill amendments last December.

“I look at (this settlement) and what the Inspector General went through,” Williams said. “This doesn’t bode well. It’s not a good sign for transparency in Baltimore County.”