Inside City Hall
Baltimore won’t disclose the agreement it made with D.C. law firm over employee’s heat death
“Citizens are best served when their government can have the benefit of confidential legal advice,” the law department says in denying our PIA request
Above: Conn Maciel Carey’s specialty is defending large employers on workplace safety issues. (connmaciel.com)
The city Law Department says its contract with a D.C. law firm to review safety practices at the Department of Public Works in the wake of an employee death from heat exhaustion is not subject to public disclosure under the Maryland Public Information Act.
While an “independent” and “thorough review” of the circumstances of the death was promised by Mayor Brandon Scott and DPW Acting Director Khalil Zaied, the actual contract was channeled through the law department, which can enter into agreements with outside legal counsel without competitive bidding or disclosure to the Board of Estimates.
“Citizens are best served when their government can have the benefit of confidential legal advice just as any other private litigant and when their government can deliberate about how it desires to handle its legal affairs,” Ahleah Knapp, the department’s PIA coordinator, told The Brew this afternoon.
The Scott administration’s refusal to disclose or even discuss the contract underscores its worry that the release of any information pertaining to the death of Ronald Silver II could assist in a possible lawsuit by the deceased employee’s family.
On August 2, the 36-year-old sanitation worker approached a Baltimore resident begging for water in 99° heat and died soon afterward at an area hospital.
The administration is under fire after reports by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming revealed that DPW sanitation yards, including the one that Silver was assigned to, lacked functioning air conditioning, bottled cold water, working showers and other safeguards for crews working in extreme heat.
Last week, The Brew disclosed that Conn Maciel Carey LLP, hired to conduct the DPW safety review, represents mining, oil and gas, chemical manufacturing and other industries facing workplace inspections and rule making by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
Its founding partner, Eric J. Conn, currently is leading lobbying efforts in Washington to weaken a national heat standard proposed by OSHA that would cover 36 million workers.
The fiancee of DPW worker Ronald Silver recalls the 36-year-old father of five as attorney Thiru Vignarajah looks on. (Fern Shen)
Reasons for Denial
During a hearing last Thursday, Baltimore Deputy Solicitor Stephen Salsbury told the City Council that the findings made by Conn Maciel Carey will “help us develop recommendations that will be shared publicly before anything is implemented.”
In denying access to the contract and other city interactions with the law firm, Knapp wrote that “deliberative material, a subset of which is attorney work product, is able to be withheld from disclosure in response to a PIA request when its release would not be in the public interest.”
What’s more, “selective redaction of the agreement sought by your request would undermine the deliberative and attorney work product privileges in that it would create an un-level playing field in any litigation by allowing the government’s opposing parties to have access to information about government representation and strategy that is generally not available to private parties in litigation.
“Finally and perhaps most persuasively,” she continued, “Maryland’s Appellate Court recently held that the Baltimore City Department of Law need not disclose an agreement with outside counsel in response to a PIA request.”
“Airbrushing horrific failures”
The 2021 decision she cited involves a request by Energy Policy Advocates, an industry-funded nonprofit, for correspondence between city attorneys and environmental groups regarding ongoing litigation.
Thiru Vignarajah, the Silver family’s attorney and a recent unsuccessful candidate for mayor, denounced the hiring of Conn Maciel Carey as a ploy by the Scott administration for “writing its own narrative” and “airbrushing the horrific failures of city officials.”
He called on IG Cumming to conduct an investigation of the circumstances of Silver’s death, including “whether the city’s failures were concerns that your office had previously flagged and what more could have been done to prevent this tragedy.”
Saying she could not confirm or deny such an investigation, Cumming said her office’s examination of workplace conditions at DPW is “ongoing.”