BALITMORE COUNTY, Md. — The latest report from the Office of the Inspector General details how the Baltimore County Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) unit allegedly wasted over $737,000 on the PRiSM software system from March 2008 to April 2025.
The report is a continuation of Inspector General Kelly Madigan's investigation that initially began in 2023, which found fraudulent activity from a roofing contractor in relation to a subcontracting agreement with a certified Minority Business Enterprise.
That initial report was followed by an internal report that raised concerns about the county awarding another contract to the same roofing contractor while it was under investigation for fraud.
A third report was released in November 2024 detailing more fraudulent activities by the same roofing contractor and concerns about required compliance not being performed by the MBE.
Included in that report were compatibility issues between PRiSM and Workday, a county-wide financial and human capital management system.
The report explains that the MBE was using a "workaround" that involved Excel spreadsheets to try to compensate for the issues, but the volume of transactions was such that the MBE could not effectively perform compliance on the MBE contracts.
In the report released Wednesday by Madigan, who is just days from leaving the Baltimore County Office of the Inspector General to become the Inspector General for Howard County, the office examined 350 contracts with MBE goals that were active between January 1, 2022, and March 31, 2025.
It was determined that almost half of the contracts reviewed had no compliance-related documentation, meaning that no compliance had been performed on those contracts by the MBE unit.
Of the half that did have some semblance of compliance, only a small percentage of those contract files appeared to have adequate documentation.
The OIG also found that Baltimore County had paid a vendor $737,593.50 between 2008 and 2025 for PRiSM, along with certain software add-ons.
PRiSM was supposed to be used by the MBE to perform compliance on the contracts, but due to the compatibility issues, the software was never fully integrated with those systems and was never fully utilized as intended by the MBE unit.
The lack of compatibility was cited as a significant factor in the MBE unit not properly fulfilling its duties and responsibilities.
According to the report, it was determined that the over $737,000 of taxpayer money was wasted by Baltimore County.
In response to the report, County Administrative Officer D'Andrea Walker stated that a total of eight cure letters for noncompliance were issued by the county's purchasing division with minority and women-owned business enterprise commitments, along with two penalty letters, resulting in over $300,000 in fines.
The full report can be read below:
