Reporter John E. Woodruff's Sunday Sun article about the Baltimore Development Corp. presents convincing evidence that this essential agency is in bad disarray. We urge Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke to see to it that this "amateur hour" -- as one critic put it -- will be overhauled.
Baltimore City has lost 60,000 jobs in the past five years. This is compounded by an even greater long-term loss of manufacturing jobs. Confronted with this kind of hemorrhage, the city needs a top-notch economic development agency.
The Baltimore Development Corp., which was created in 1991 through the merger of the Baltimore Economic Development Corp. and the Charles Center-Inner Harbor Management Corp., has been a chaotic operation from the very beginning. A high degree of politicization in the department has not helped bring a stronger focus to the agency.
Honora Freeman, the agency's director, provides a prime example of this politicization. She got the $81,000-a-year job largely because she was an associate of two top Schmoke strategists, lawyers Ronald Shapiro and Larry S. Gibson. Ms. Freeman's main asset seems to be her unquestioning loyalty. She, in turn, has hired and promoted other loyalists. This has produced an agency where talent is so thinly spread that things move slowly.
A slow pace may be common to most government bureaucracies. But the city-financed Baltimore Development Corp. was structured as an ostensibly private organization precisely in order to cut red tape and enable the agency to move quickly.
Yet Mr. Woodruff's article cited repeated complaints by business leaders about the development corporation's failures to act promptly, or to follow up or even communicate. These are shortcomings that cannot -- and should not -- be tolerated in an economic advocacy agency. (Interestingly, these very same complaints are often voiced about Mr. Schmoke's staff at City Hall.)
As Baltimore has lost much of its white and black middle class over the past decades, the city has become a less desirable place for retail businesses and offices. Aggressive development officials from other jurisdictions are constantly on the prowl, trying to lure remaining businesses from the city. To repulse these efforts, the Baltimore Development Corp. must be flexible and alert. Today it is neither.
The mayor needs to sharpen the agency's focus and strengthen its leadership. He must also find a better balance for the business community's needs and Messrs. Shapiro's and Gibson's political demands. Things cannot continue as they are.