The mayor’s press secretary and deputy chief of staff has instructed City Hall’s director of minority business development not to answer questions regarding the hiring of her next-door neighbor as a $60,000 city consultant.

“Sharon, please do not respond and allow the law department to acknowledge receipt,” Kevin Harris instructed Sharon R. Pinder, director of the Mayor’s Office of Minority and Women-Owned Business Development, in response to The Brew’s request for documents regarding the hiring of David Mosley.

In emails obtained by Brew reporters, Harris also revealed how the mayor’s office planned to deal with its request for documents under the Maryland Public Information Act.

Rather than release the documents directly, Harris said, the city law department will first “share” the material with the mayor’s office and review what can be excluded from public disclosure.

Questions Need Not be Answered

In his email to Pinder and City Solicitor George Nilson, Harris wrote, “They [the law department] will share documents with us before it goes to the Brew, and advise on how much of this is subject to MPIA.”

In response, Nilson emailed back to Harris and Pinder: “Some are doc requests and some are questions that need not be answered.”

UPDATE: In an emailed response to this article, Harris said the mayor’s office has no intention of excluding information from the public. He said he intentionally included The Brew in his email to Pinder and Nilson.

“At no time was there ever an attempt to exclude information from the public or the media, as is evidenced by the fact Mr. Reutter was left on the e-mail chain,” Harris wrote.

FULL TEXT OF HIS RESPONSE HERE.

The mayor’s office and Pinder had refused to discuss the hiring of David Mosley – an unsuccessful hotel developer who lives next door to Pinder at an exclusive Howard County subdivision – before the story was published last Friday.

It revealed that Mosley and his partner, Vernon J. Marrow, were hired as a part-time consultant (at $60,500) and full-time director (at $93,500) at the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Business Center supervised by Pinder.

Opened in March at the Johns Hopkins at Eastern Building on 33rd Street, the office is funded by a three-year, $900,000 grant from the Minority Business Development Agency of the U.S. Commerce Department.

Al Betancourt, the agency’s spokesman, has not responded to repeated requests for comment. The agency’s director, Alejandra Castillo, attended the center’s opening with Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and U.S. Congressman Elijah Cummings.

Helping Minorities or Themselves?

Based on available records, the salaries of Mosley and Marrow will consume more than half of the center’s budget during its first year. The city has also hired a project coordinator, which means that nearly all the center’s funds will be used up in salaries.

The center is designed to help minority and women-owned businesses obtain funding for overseas markets and to work with Fortune 500 companies.

Mosley and Marrow – partners in a failed scheme to build a $81 million Hyatt Place hotel in Harlem, N.Y., that’s now subject to a lawsuit – are charged with giving advice to minorities and making contacts with large companies.

Also involved in the legal tangle are Brian D. Morris, the politically-connected ex-chair of the Baltimore school board, and Emmitt Smith, the NFL football star who joined Mosley, Marrow and Morris in a company called ESmith Legacy.

Based on their on-line biographies, neither Mosley nor Marrow has any experience in administering a governmental program. Until they were named to the center, people involved in Baltimore’s minority business community say they had never heard of them.

Earlier Pinder Controversy

Pinder was hired by Rawlings-Blake in March 2012. A month later, Fox 45 News reported that her company, The Pinder Group, was in line for a $70,000 city contract.

The contract was part of $694,730 awarded to the National Economic Research Association for a “disparity study” of minority and women-owned businesses in Baltimore.

The larger award had sparked controversy because it was nearly $300,000 higher than the lowest bid for the work.

City Council President Bernard C. “Jack” Young and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt voted against the contract, but it was muscled through the Board of Estimates with the combined votes of Mayor Rawlings-Blake, City Solicitor Nilson and then-Public Works director Alfred Foxx.

Following the report, a mayoral spokesman said that Pinder was taking steps “to remove herself from this bid” and “her firm will have no role in the contract.”

State corporate records currently list The Pinder Group as “forfeited.”