Last week, County Executive Allan Kittleman announced four new hires with histories of public service to his administration.
• The county's new budget director is Holly Sun, who most recently served as deputy director for the Prince George's County's budget office, where she oversaw a budget of more than $3 billion a year, according to a county press release. Sun has also worked as budget manager for the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission. According to Kittleman's office, she has experience working with CountyStat, a performance-review system that the county executive proposed to implement in Howard County as "HoCo Stat" while on the campaign trail.
Sun replaces veteran budget director Ray Wacks, who served as the county's budget director for a total of more than 30 years.
• Jahantab Siddiqui will be Kittleman's new deputy chief of staff. Siddiqui previously worked as a senior management and budget specialist in Montgomery County, according to Kittleman's office, and was also special assistant to Democratic U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski.
• Deidre McCabe will be Director of Communications for Howard County. McCabe worked as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun for nearly a decade before becoming a writer and editor for the Columbia Association. She later worked as communications coordinator for the Maryland Port Administration and communications director for the Maryland Department of Disabilities, according to her resume.
• Sandy Schrader will be the county's Director of Intergovernmental Affairs. Schrader was the first woman from Howard County to be elected to the state Senate, where she served for five years from 2002 to 2007. Schrader, a Republican from District 13, sat on the powerful budget and taxation committee for three years of her term. After leaving the Senate, Schrader worked as a senior consultant for government relations and business development with The Artemis Group, a consulting firm that helps businesses and nonprofits work with the public sector.
• Tom Yeatts, Kittleman's brother-in-law and a partner and associate broker at the Kittleman Group, will join the administration as a technology consultant, Kittleman press secretary Andy Barth confirmed. Before founding the Kittleman Group with wife Laura Kittleman, the two ran a web-based software development company called VirtualSprockets, which worked for clients such as the ACLU, the McCain for President Campaign in 2000 and the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation, before being sold to Kintera, a publicly traded company, in 2003, according to Laura Kittleman's resume.