For three years, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt have fought over a stalled upgrade of Baltimore's outdated municipal phone system. Accusations have flown. Legal battles have been waged. Millions in taxpayer dollars, both sides agree, have been wasted.
Now they have agreed to move forward.
The city's Board of Estimates, on which both women sit, is expected to hire a consultant Wednesday to prepare a request for bids and then oversee a system-wide upgrade of Baltimore's aging phones to modern Voice-over-Internet-Protocol technology.
The Battles Group of Silver Spring will be paid $205,000 to prepare the bid request and provide help during a "rigorous and objective evaluation of the bidders' proposals," according to board documents.
Kevin Harris, a spokesman for Rawlings-Blake, said the city expects to begin installing new phones by spring 2016.
"Both sides recognized the need and had a desire to do better," Harris said. "They did what people expect their elected officials to do: They came together, sat down and they worked it out."
Pratt, who filed a lawsuit against the Rawlings-Blake administration three years ago over the phones issue, said she was pleased by the agreement. "I'm excited and I'm supportive of the progress that has been made," she said.
The city's municipal phone system has been criticized for years. Many phones lack such basic features as call waiting and caller identification. Some do not tell employees when they have received a voice mail. And the city's system is millions of dollars more expensive than other more modern options.
Pratt's office urged in 2012 that a $7 million contract to upgrade the phones go to IBM, which won a bidding process supervised by her office. But the mayor rejected the deal as too expensive, and the Board of Estimates voted it down that July.
While Pratt was seeking bids, officials in the mayor's technology office were quietly using an existing contract to spend nearly $675,000 on phone and computer equipment to start replacing the system, an investigation by the city's inspector general found.
Inspector General David N. McClintock also found that the Mayor's Office of Information Technology withheld information from other city officials about the project.
After his report came out, Pratt filed suit against the administration, alleging that the mayor's office was illegally circumventing the competitive bidding process and wasting taxpayer dollars. The lawsuit was eventually dismissed.
Meanwhile, both sides agreed that the city has been wasting millions of dollars by continuing to use its 14,000-line system. Chris Tonjes, the mayor's former chief of information technology, estimated that the city could save more than $2 million a year by upgrading the phones.
City Councilman Carl Stokes said Tuesday that he's glad to see the agreement but wished it had come sooner.
"We've lost a lot of money over the last three years," Stokes said.
Stokes added that he hopes the city will take a close look at which phones need to be upgraded and which do not. He noted that at one point some in the mayor's office has begun buying video phones — a move he called ridiculous.
"The phone on my desk works fine for me," Stokes said. "If I need to see the person I'm talking to, I go see them. If folks don't need a fancy phone, don't give one to them."
The city's Centrex system, which is run by Verizon, has been in place for decades. Former Mayor Sheila Dixon has said that many in City Hall believed the phones were outdated even during the mayoral administration of Martin O'Malley, which ended eight years ago.
City Councilman Robert Curran said he's had the same phone in his council office for two decades.
"Does it have all the amenities you'd like to have, like caller ID and call waiting? No," Curran said. "Sometimes you can't access the voice mail. Is it about time for an upgrade? Yes. If it saves costs, I'm all for it. I'm glad to see the comptroller and the mayor are getting on the same page."
Lester Davis, a spokesman for City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, said he had "maintained faith" the mayor and comptroller could reach a compromise.
"The council president stands ready to work with the mayor and comptroller to revamp the city's antiquated phone system," Davis said.
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