Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen announced Wednesday that the council will hold a hearing on the potential safety implications and cost to customers after a Maryland Public Service Commission investigation found a BGE inspector falsified his reports.

“Yesterday we found out that a BGE inspector falsified safety inspections,” Cohen wrote on X. “We deserve to know if our utilities are safe, especially when BGE uses safety to justify rate hikes.”

The PSC’s report found that the “acknowledged pattern of falsification of records suggests a non-trivial violation of inspection integrity and safety protocols, increasing the potential for risks to the gas distribution system and public safety,” The Baltimore Sun reported Tuesday.

The council’s letter to the utility requests the presence of BGE’s CEO and President Carim Khouzami, as well as unredacted copies of the PSC’s report and BGE’s internal investigation of the inspector. A hearing date has not yet been set, Joe Bowen, Cohen’s communications director, told The Sun.

The commission’s investigation began after 14 former BGE employees came forward alleging mismanagement and fraud in December.

BGE’s spokesman Richard Yost said the redactions were due to a “union-represented personnel issue,” in a Wednesday night email to The Sun. BGE also disagreed with the way the investigation characterized its findings, he said.

“We respectfully disagree with the PSC Engineering Division’s conclusions that suggest that there were multiple instances where a single former employee submitted false audits or that the actions of that employee compromised our gas system safety,” he wrote in the email.

“The activity in question involved the former employee conducting contractor compliance audits, not safety inspections as characterized by the PSC.”

Further, Yost said, audits “are not a comprehensive review of all work.”

“BGE identified a single instance in 2024 where the former employee submitted a falsified post-audit report. No reinspection was required because the contractor conducting the specified work had not yet commenced work,” he said.

As for cost concerns, he said BGE “proactively removed this former employee’s entire salary” from its cost recovery.

“BGE maintains a comprehensive approach to contractor oversight that includes multiple verification methods and built-in redundancies. This multi-layered approach reflects our unwavering commitment to safety as our highest priority,” Yost wrote.

Baltimore Sun reporter Lorraine Mirabella contributed to this story.

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