To help him prepare to take over as Baltimore County executive, a job that puts him in charge of 7,000 employees and a $1.9 billion budget, James T. Smith Jr. has assembled a team of 27 people from a variety of backgrounds, races and communities.
The team is meeting with county department heads and managers and is drafting reports on the agencies' structures, goals, successes, failures and issues, short term and long term, said Joseph Blair, transition team chairman.
"I expect he'll spend most of his Thanksgiving weekend reading reports, if we can get them to him by then," said Blair, who is the former chairman of Baltimore Life Insurance Co. "It's an intense process. I didn't get lunch today and didn't get lunch yesterday, but I'm enthused about what we're doing."
Del. Adrienne A.W. Jones, a Randallstown Democrat who has worked in county government for more than 20 years, is the team's vice chairwoman.
Members of the team include Dunbar Brooks, a demographer with the Baltimore Metropolitan Council and a former school board president; Barbara "Bebe" Kernan, director of corporate and public affairs at RESI, the consulting arm of Towson University; Stuart D. Kaplow, a Towson lawyer and vice chairman of the Baltimore County Chamber of Commerce; and Michael K. Day Sr., president of the Baltimore County Professional Firefighters and Paramedics.
Others are George Shoenberger, assistant vice president at the University of Maryland, Baltimore; Albert Kim, a certified public accountant and tax planning specialist; Del. Nancy Hubers, a Middle River Democrat; Anirban Basu, director of applied economics at RESI; and Jacob Smith, controller at Carpet Land Inc.
The team includes Harold Reid, Department of Community Conservation staff member and former planning board chairman; Jack Murphy, a Catonsville lawyer and former county councilman; Ron DeJuliis, business manager of the International Union of Operating Engineers; and M. Teresa Cook, director of architecture, engineering and construction at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
Smith also tapped Ted Zaleski, former director of the county Department of Permits and Licenses; Meg Ferguson, Baltimore County labor commissioner; Michael Weber, an accountant and Smith's campaign treasurer; Elayne Hettleman, director of Leadership Baltimore County; and Thomas G. Iler, director of the county Department of Information Technology.
The team also includes Gloria McJilton, a community activist from Dundalk; Peter O'Malley, brother of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley and the principal of GovStat; Van Ross, president of the Woodlawn Development Association; David Gildea, a lawyer and former law clerk for Smith; planning board member Jennifer Macek; Paul Amirault, longtime treasurer of the Perry Hall Recreation Council; and Darren Granger, a lieutenant in the sheriff's office.