Recent audits of two Baltimore City agencies, the Department of Human Resources (DHR) and Department of Transportation (DOT), revealed shortcomings that city leaders say they’ll be working to address early in 2025.

Auditor Josh Pasch of the Baltimore City Comptroller’s office conducted the biennial audits covering both agencies’ fiscal years 2022 and 2023. Pasch presented them to the public at the city’s Board of Estimates meeting on Dec. 18.

The DHR audit found that delays have plagued the hiring process for city employees but did not conclusively establish a sole reason for the holdups.

“My takeaway is that you went into it trying to find out why … there’s a slow hiring process, and we simply don’t have the data points necessary to figure out what is actually slowing down the process,” said City Comptroller Bill Henry, one of five voting members on the Board of Estimates.

Asked to respond, DHR Director Quinton Herbert chalked the delays up to the city’s implementation of the software Workday in December 2022 to manage hiring and employee onboarding operations. Herbert said DHR employees lack the necessary training to adequately use Workday in a timely manner to keep up with hiring demands, so additional training on the platform is necessary.

According to Herbert, DHR is implementing a three-part action plan to: (1) Separate shared services from recruitment efforts under Recruitment Chief Conrad Samuels, (2) improve training and hiring procedures such as by implementing automatic rejection letters for denied candidates, (3) and develop an internal recruitment review process. The latter process is in its testing phase, Herbert said at the meeting.

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott, one of five voting members on the Board of Estimates, expressed his desire to see human resources operations further consolidated in the city.

“Centralizing all parts of HR that we can centralize without getting ourselves in any trouble is the intent for our city,” Scott said.

Responding to Scott, city Chief Administrative Officer Faith Leech said a 10-year government efficiency section of the plan to centralize HR will be completed in March or April.

Pasch’s DOT audit largely focused on the process of reviewing minor privilege permits, which allow businesses and homeowners to place outdoor objects like tables and chairs in the public’s right of way.

The audit found that the DOT does not effectively communicate permit requirements to applicants and that the information on its website is inconsistent, outdated, and not available in multiple languages.

According to Pasch, the department does not segregate its duties, which impacts the city’s ability to maintain proper records of minor privilege permit requests and opens the door for potential fraud or permits being issued without payment.

“We did not find any instances of fraud,” Pasch said. “However, we did find risks of error and fraud because of no segregation of duties.”

Pasch attributed the segregation of duties problem to an increase in the average amount of time needed to obtain a minor privilege permit, from 29 days in 2022 to 36 days in 2023.

DOT Interim Director Veobia Akilo — Veronica P. McBeth will assume permanent leadership of the department on Jan. 13 — responded by acknowledging the department’s need to modify public documents online and its standard operating procedures for reviewing applications, including a monthly review of all applications and their supporting documents. Akilo said the procedures will be updated in the coming months and ready for full implementation on March 31.

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