government contracts

The Taneytown council approves two contracts for the construction and construction management of upgrades to the city's wastewater management system

Harford County Public Schools officials are working with their counterparts across the state to find "alternative" and "creative" methods to raise money for badly-needed capital repairs that, in some cases, could get local school systems in trouble with regulators if maintenance continues to be put off for a lack of funds.

Anne Arundel County Executive Laura Neuman proposed a budget Thursday that includes a small decrease in property taxes and 20 more police officers.

The head of the Mayor's Office of Information Technology has been placed on paid leave indefinitely as Baltimore's inspector general investigates allegations that the department made payments to contractual employees for work they may not have performed, officials said Tuesday.

Harford County is undertaking a nearly $2 million comprehensive review of county-owned and operated facilities, a review that involves 184 public buildings, including schools, libraries, Harford Community College, volunteer fire companies and general government facilities.

Maryland employers added 8,900 jobs in November, largely in the private sector, pushing the state's unemployment rate down to 6.4 percent, the federal government said Friday.

For Impact Aid to have any meaningful effect, it probably needs to be allocated to programs that would help the economically disaffected people who live near the military installations.

Maryland's federal workers and contractors could once more be without paychecks in three months, which is bad news for holiday spending.

Furloughed and forgotten

Unlike federal workers, contract employees won't be getting paid back for their forced vacation.

Effects of the partial federal government shutdown Tuesday were felt across Maryland, home to 300,000 federal workers, more government contractors, and several agencies.

The Annapolis-based aerospace technology firm Arinc, Inc., which employs hundreds of people in Anne Arundel County, will be sold for $1.39 billion under an acquisition agreement announced Sunday.

Edward Joseph Snowden, the government contractor who revealed the National Security Agency's massive telephone- and Internet-surveillance program, has left few public clues about his life growing up in Crofton and Ellicott City

As federal agencies pull back on spending, 7Delta's strategy is thinking big. The Columbia IT firm is going after larger contracts, a diversification tactic that other federal contractors at the smaller end of the scale are trying, too: Expansion in a time of retrenchment.

Tough new regulations to protect chicken growers on the Eastern Shore were quietly rolled back in a massive federal spending bill last month — enraging advocates for the mom-and-pop farms and straining their already rocky relationship with Salisbury-based Perdue.

With less than a week to go until the federal government's March 1 deadline to reach an agreement avoiding a set of spending cuts known as sequestration, the local business community is in the dark about its potential impact.

Local efforts to help government contractors navigate the complex world of federal procurement are looking particularly relevant these days with big budget cuts looming.

A bipartisan plan to avoid federal spending reductions and tax increases that would hit Maryland especially hard won final approval Tuesday night in the House of Representatives even as outside groups warned that the bill would simply delay difficult decisions for a few months.

The city of Baltimore is likely wasting tens of thousands of dollars a month on "phantom" phone lines that are never used, the city's new information technology director said Thursday.

Baltimore is wasting about $400,000 every month it does not install a new phone system, a lawyer for Comptroller Joan M. Pratt argued in the court Thursday. But the mayor's lawyers argued that Pratt has no legal right to sue the city because she is a city officer.

Almost two years have passed since the people of Carroll County's District 2 elected me to the office of County Commissioner.

Months after Baltimore Comptroller Joan Pratt issued a request for bids for a multimillion project to upgrade the city's phone system, the head of the Mayor's Office of Information Technology came to her to pitch a proposal. Then- Chief Technology Officer Rico Singleton handed Pratt a detailed plan under which his office would revamp the phone system – a proposal based on using the CISCO brand of phones and equipment.

Despite financing more than $140 million city contracts in the past 12 years, donating tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic causes and being a member of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake's inner circle, J.P. Grant has largely avoided the limelight.

Maryland's unemployment rate in February remained unchanged at 6.5 percent from a month earlier, the U.S. Department of Labor announced Friday.

Harford County Board of Estimates approves contract to hire lobbyist

Jacobs and Impallaria are Harford natives in second district race

Maryland employers added nearly 25,000 jobs last year, according to new estimates, the best performance since 2006 but one that still leaves the state with more than 80,000 jobs to make up from recessionary losses.

Congress takes a final vote to repeal a law that would have required governments to withhold 3 percent of contract awards to ensure that businesses paid their taxes. The idea was wildly unpopular and could have harmed the regional economy, business leaders say.

Four companies that will help create a single high-speed broadband Internet system in the state to improve communications among public agencies, as well as upgrade telecommunications in rural areas, were awarded contracts this week.