The Baltimore City Council Budget & Appropriations Committee is advancing nearly $68 million to cover overspending within various city agencies in fiscal year 2024.

City Budget Director Laura Larsen on Tuesday described it as “retroactive appropriations.”

The appropriations include 11 total bills — which were read at the full council meeting last week — totaling $67,859,335. While the city still had a $46 million overall surplus last year, Larsen said this amount is greater than appropriations for fiscal year 2023 but less than appropriations for fiscal year 2022.

One of the bills would provide the Baltimore City Fire Department (BCFD) with more than $33 million to fund “overtime due to sworn vacancies and unbudgeted EMS contractual services.”

BCFD budget issues have become a major discussion point in recent years, as Larsen says the department has consistently run a $30 million annual deficit since the COVID-19 pandemic. Much of this deficit comes from tapping BCFD staff for overtime hours to cover other first responder shifts in the city, according to Larsen.

“Staffing shortages within EMS services are driving considerable overtime because we are re-deploying staff from our fire suppression service over to EMS,” Larsen told The Sun Tuesday. “We then not only have to backfill the vacant shift on the EMS schedule, but then we also have the overtime expenditures that were accrued for EMS services.”

A similar bill would authorize more than $3 million to “provide funding for overtime due to sworn vacancies” within the Baltimore Police Department.

But as Larsen noted, the staffing troubles went beyond the traditional realm of public safety personnel last fiscal year. Agencies like the Department of Public Works and the Department of Recreation and Parks also suffered from staffing shortages, the budget director said.

Councilman Antonio “Tony” Glover, who represents East Baltimore, suggested the city’s overtime burden also extended to individual employees.

According to Glover, BCFD paramedic David Lunsford earned $113,157 last year. But with overtime accruals, Lunsford’s total compensation ballooned to $358,586, making him Baltimore’s highest-paid city employee.

Solutions proposed

City Council President Zeke Cohen — who is not a member of the Budget & Appropriations Committee but was present at Tuesday’s hearing — suggested the city should invest more in growing and training its workforce to reduce its reliance on overtime and outside contractors, respectively. Greater collaboration with Baltimore City Public Schools on student apprenticeships should also be part of these efforts, Cohen said.

“I think it is both about being competitive on the salary side and also us being intentional with the school system … with all the agencies to make sure that we are home-growing our own workforce,” Cohen said.

The city council president took a swipe at President Donald Trump’s cuts to the federal workforce, saying he does not “want to see that dynamic replicated at the local level” with Baltimore City employees.

Larsen said the city must be “past the point” of blaming transition to human resources software Workday, a process initiated in fiscal year 2023, for budget troubles. She agreed with Cohen’s approach to growing the city’s workforce and noted the strategy has been implemented to some extent within the Department of Finance’s payroll personnel.

“In the fiscal 2025 budget, the council approved creating some restructuring of the staffing level for that service, and so they were able to create some additional accounting positions to support the payroll process,” Larsen said. “And we’ve been able to see how they’ve been able to ramp down the use of the contractual service.”

Larsen also expressed a desire to see the city further implement aspects of the city Department of Human Resources’ 2021 “salary study,” which she said could lead to better wages for union employees in fiscal year 2026.

All 11 bills passed by the committee will receive a second reading from Budget & Appropriations Committee Chair Danielle McCray at the next Baltimore City Council meeting, which is scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, Feb. 24. Assuming the chair’s recommendation is favorable, the appropriations bills will then head to Mayor Brandon Scott for enactment.

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