Hammering top officials at a hearing after the death of a Baltimore sanitation worker overcome by the heat, City Council members last night held up a harsh mirror, depicting the bureaucrats as out of touch and uncaring.

Council member Odette Ramos homed in on Department of Public Works (DPW) supervisors keeping water and Gatorade locked away at city yards where crews are based even after two Inspector General reports had called out the lack of them.

“That to me says we know we must do this, but we don’t really want to help you,” Ramos said pressing DPW Acting Director Khalil Zaied. “It wasn’t just at one facility, it was at every one. So it was regulated. That’s bananas!”

“Somebody said, ‘Here’s Gatorade and water, but you can only have it in certain circumstances?’ Are you kidding me? It’s 105 degrees outside!” she continued.

A longtime city official who has worked at multiple municipal departments, Zaied was on the defensive all night.

He pointed out that he has only been leading DPW for five months, that he hadn’t known about the workplace concerns until “just recently,” and acknowledged that he had never gone on a ride-along with a trash truck crew. He said he had gone to the sanitation yards, but generally “by the time I get there most of the routine services drivers and laborers have left.”

“There should be a cultural change in the way how we do it. It will stop,” he promised Ramos. “Our supervisors need to be trained and need to be be accountable.”

But Ramos wanted to know who – higher up – was responsible for permitting such a rationing policy. She pushed back on the repeated pledge by Zaied and his deputies to end the “toxic culture” at the Bureau of Solid Waste.

“It’s indicative of not just the culture change that might have to happen at the grassroots level, but frankly at the leadership,” she said. “For some reason, you didn’t know that that was happening.”

“You’re saying ‘Here’s Gatorade and water, but you can only have it in certain circumstances?’ Are you kidding me? It’s 105° outside”  – Councilwoman Odette Ramos.

Councilman Robert Stokes scoffed at the idea there was anything new about the culture of mistreatment and cruelty, widely discussed in the wake of the August 2 death of Ronald Silver II after working in sweltering Code Red conditions and collapsing on a resident’s doorstep.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” Stokes said, holding up printouts of the Inspector General’s report picturing urusty broken sinks, bashed-in lockers and non-functioning air conditioning units at the sanitation yards.

“Were any emails sent out to any city agency? Anybody?” he asked, pointing to the city administrator’s office as well as DPW. “If they were, we want to see them. And were the questions answered? If they weren’t? Why not?”

“We showed how much we care about the lowest paid city workers in the city,” Stokes concluded. “We should be ashamed.”

Not Budging on Law Firm

The evening began with a plea from Silver’s mother, Faith Johnson, for the city “to do what needed to be done before my son died.”

“I’m angry. I’m devastated. But we as a family will turn that pain into purpose,” Johnson said.

The meeting stretched on for hours, with testimony from workers, union leaders and members of the public as well as DPW brass.

But it was a representative of the Law Department who responded when lawmakers decried the city’s decision to have its investigation of the tragedy conducted by a law firm with a history of representing big employers – a boutique D.C. legal group that is currently leading efforts to weaken the national workplace heat standard being crafted by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“Who selected this firm?” Councilman Antonio Glover asked. “Is it because this firm is near and dear to the employer themselves, and they’re getting the information that the employer wants to hear?”

Deputy Solicitor Stephen Salsbury said the decision was his, and that Conn Maciel Carey LLP was selected because of its expertise.

“What this firm was brought on to do is to bring to bear an extensive amount of expertise in industrial hygiene to help us develop recommendations that will be shared publicly before anything is implemented,” Salsbury said.

The legal team includes “someone who was an industrial hygienist, who spent 18 years at a state Occupational Safety and Health Agency, during which time he was a member of a union,” he said, going on to note the “complicated legal framework around heat safety [that is] emerging and developing.”

Pointing out that Conn Maciel Carey is leading national lobbying to weaken a new heat standard rule in favor of employers, Councilman Zeke Cohen called for the city to drop the company and find a replacement.

“There is a longstanding policy we do not share engagement agreements with law firms”  – Deputy Solicitor Stephen Salsbury.

”This is a firm that represents companies largely trying to push back on OSHA and, from what I can read, weaken heat standards,” Cohen said.

Salsbury, responding, did not appear to entertain making such a change.

As for Glover’s request that the law department release its contract with Conn Maciel Carey or make it public at the Board of Estimates, Salsbury offered this explanation for its refusal to do so.

“There is a longstanding policy we do not share engagement agreements with law firms,” he said.

“That is something that would be protected by the attorney-client privilege. We have to be mindful not just of this matter, but other matters where we the city goes out and engages a third-party law firm.”

A Challenge from Glover

Glover, a former DPW employee who rode the garbage trucks for years before he was elected to the Council, denounced the hiring of the law firm in highly personal remarks.

“What I want to represent is the people that picked up the trash that nobody wants to touch. I’m a trash man. I picked up the filth nobody wants to touch,” he said, urging the administration to listen to what workers and the public have been saying is wrong with DPW for years.

“We are the experts. We’re telling you what we want. We’re telling you what’s going on with these agencies. And, you know, it feels like things have fallen on deaf ears,” he said. “We’re going out to this independent contractor. . . to tell us what we already know.”

“Just give it an hour, and you’ll fail. And you’ll see what those men and women go through each and every day”  – Councilman Antonio Glover.

He challenged city managers and his Council colleagues to ride a trash truck to better understand what workers endure.

“Just give it an hour, and you’ll fail. And you’ll see what those men and women go through each and every day,” he said.

“They got to deal with the rats jumping out those cans, the filth, the fluids that are on their bodies,” Glover continued, his voice rising. “And not having to go to a facility where they can clean themselves. So they’re taking their filth home to their families.”