CLARIFICATION

An article Sunday on Baltimore County Executive-elect James T. Smith Jr. said the vice chairwoman of his transition team, Del. Adrienne A.W. Jones, was not interested in a post in Smith's office.

However, Jones, who has been a county employee for 26 years, does intend to keep her current job as head of the county's Office of Fair Practices and Community Affairs.

Immediately after the votes were tallied in Baltimore County, the phone stopped ringing in C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger's office in Towson and started ringing in James T. Smith Jr.'s office in Reisterstown.

It's not unusual for all the complaints, questions and requests to shift to the county executive-elect before inauguration formally puts him in the job. What was unusual in Smith's case was that nobody was there to answer the phone.

Although he had a $1 million budget, Smith's campaign was almost exclusively a family affair - his son was his campaign manager, his daughters helped staff events, and his wife was constantly at his side. For the rest, he relied on hundreds of volunteers.

The 60-year-old Democrat from Reisterstown credits volunteers with bringing him victory, but after the election, they went home.

Now, a week before he is to be sworn in, Smith is left without an obvious circle of close advisers who will go with him to Towson - something his predecessors said is important to navigate the shoals of politics in the county and state and to insulate him from the favor-seekers and interest groups who flock to a new administration.

And unlike previous executives, he doesn't have carte blanche over his appointments - a charter amendment approved by voters this month gives the County Council confirmation power over department heads.

"What you really need is somebody who understands what your tolerance is in any 24 hours - they need to know whether you can go from 7:30 in the morning to 9 at night. They need to know whether you're the kind of person who sticks to your calendar. You'd like to have somebody who has some understanding of the kind of internal decision-making processes that you go through," said Donald P. Hutchinson, a Democrat who was county executive from 1978 to 1986. "I'm not sure Jim has that."

Smith said he does not have that, but he isn't worried. He said he has gotten a flood of resumes. A committee is reviewing them, but he said he has made no personnel decisions.

"I think it's going to be an advantage, actually. I'm going to have a very broad talent pool to draw from, and I want very good people," he said. "I don't have too many people that I owe, if any."

Smith said he's confident that he will get good people who will help him run the county's government well, but it will take time. Those expecting a sharp contrast from the Ruppersberger administration immediately after the inauguration Dec. 2 will probably be disappointed.

"It may not be a dramatic point-counterpoint when it comes to December 2nd," he said.

Smith's predecessors say that although he may be content to take his time putting together his administration, he will face pressure to meet with people and discuss specifics immediately.

"All the interest groups, the people who are for development, the people who are against new development, the people who are for new roads, the people who are against new roads, are all going to try to get his ear, and they're all afraid that if they don't do it by the second week of December, the people with the opposite opinion are going to get in first," Hutchinson said.

Fresh start

Ruppersberger and his predecessor, Roger B. Hayden, the Republican who was executive from 1990 to 1994, said Smith's lack of a built-in Cabinet puts him in an enviable position in some ways - he will be able to cull the pool of applicants and pick the best people for governance, not campaigning.

"I had to line people up who can perform the tasks that had to be performed, and I had to interview people to fill those spots and motor forward," Hayden said. "The mystery that many people put on it I think is misplaced. This is an exercise in organizational management."

Still, most executives have brought along a few people with whom they have close relationships. When Ruppersberger came into office, his campaign manager, Robert J. Barrett, came with him. Barrett is still Ruppersberger's top aide.

Hayden brought his campaign aides into the executive office, and his administrative officer, Mereen E. Kelly, had worked with him when Hayden was on the school board.

Hutchinson brought his longtime aides from his state Senate office with him. Theodore G. Venetoulis, county executive from 1974 to 1978, made his campaign manager his chief of staff.

Most of Smith's predecessors, though, came from other political offices. Smith was a county councilman from 1978 to 1985 but was a judge for 16 years after that, leaving him without a cadre of political aides.

A week ago, Smith announced a 27-member transition team of people from various backgrounds, some of whom worked with him on the campaign. They are busily at work studying the status of county departments and drafting reports for the new executive.

But its makeup provides few clues about who will be in Smith's inner circle after the inauguration. The chairman of the team, Joseph Blair, the retired head of Baltimore Life Insurance Co., and the vice chairwoman, Del. Adrienne A.W. Jones, a Randallstown Democrat, said they don't want jobs in Smith's office.

Blair said that as of midweek, he hadn't had a discussion with Smith about possible inner-circle personnel and hadn't begun interviewing people.

In the meantime, few members of Ruppersberger's inner circle are headed with him to Washington, where he's a newly elected congressman. Some are taking the transition as an opportunity to explore other careers, but many aren't cleaning out their desks just yet.

"Jimmy knows ... most of the people who are close with me," Ruppersberger said. "He knew a lot of the people before I knew them."

Ruppersberger and Smith have been friends for 20 years, and the two have met to discuss the transition. Their staffs are cooperating, and Smith's transition team is working out of a conference room in the executive suite of the old courthouse.

But Ruppersberger is making a transition of his own to the House of Representatives and has been spending much of his time in Washington. Smith has also been meeting with a variety of other elected officials.

Key post

One change Smith has announced is that he intends to rely more heavily on the county administrative officer than Ruppersberger did. The position is defined in the charter as being like a city manager, a nonpolitical post designed to handle the day-to-day details of government. Working on the budget is one of the major duties.

But Smith said he doesn't know who his administrative officer will be.

"I intend for my county administrative officer to be a major player in my administration," he said. "I'm looking for a good administrator, not just a good friend of Jim Smith."

But the charter amendment makes his appointments to that and other key posts, such as directors of the budget office, public works and the permits department, more complicated than they have been for other executives.

Councilmen said they didn't push for the amendment to pick fights with the executive. Rather, they said it would be surprising if Smith nominated someone who couldn't get the four votes needed for confirmation. But some councilmen have expressed wariness about what kind of relationship Smith may establish with them.

"Dutch's style was pretty much, 'Hey fella, how ya doing,' and you chat with him rather informally, and he would talk to you about things. Sometimes I heard him criticized for saying more than he should, but he was very open," said Councilman T. Bryan McIntire, a north county Republican. "I don't know that this administration will be that way."

Smith said his transition is proof that his government will be open and inclusive. His transition team is broad-based in terms of geography, race, occupation and experience, he said.

The team has split into subcommittees, which are holding interviews with county department heads and others to provide Smith with status reports on the operations of the government. The meetings are not open to the public, and Smith has referred requests for the documents the departments have provided the committees to the county attorney.

"I expect to get good information from my transition team, from a broad base," he said. "I talked on the stump about open government, and I talked about the input from the citizens, and I think that in my very first act, I demonstrated that's exactly what I meant."

Smith's transition team

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.

- Andrew A. Green

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

Michael K. Day Sr., president of the Baltimore County Professional Firefighters and Paramedics

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

Jacob Smith, controller at Carpet Land Inc

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

M. Teresa Cook, director of architecture, engineering and construction at the University of Maryland, Baltimore

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

Thomas G. Iler, director of the county Department of Information Technology

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

Darren Granger, a lieutenant in the sheriff's office.