Boasting four new members and a new president, the Baltimore City Council unanimously confirmed a retired lobbyist and a returning employee as the new chair of the Planning Commission and the new director of the Department of Transportation.

The mayor’s choice of Jon M. Laria and Veronica Perry McBeth was ratified Monday night after the nominees sailed through an earlier Council hearing, with Laria pledging a “pro-growth strategy” for the planning commission and McBeth vowing to undertake “comprehensive organizational changes” at DOT.

“It’s so important to create an environment that’s really receptive to growth,” Laria told lawmakers, echoing three decades of experience as a land-use attorney for prominent developers (ranging from Port Covington’s Kevin Plank to Superblock’s failed “Four Families” investment group).

“But that does not mean some sort of unfettered green light for anything anyone wants to do,” Laria cautioned.

• Mr. Connected: Choice of Jon Laria as Baltimore Planning Commission chairman raises questions (1/15/25)

His response came after being asked by freshman Councilman Paris Gray how he would prioritize community voices in the face of large-scale development.

“The right thing to do is to make sure everybody is heard,” Laria said. “I’ve seen many, many win-wins – things that started out as opposition that turned out as win-wins.”

The key “is communication and gaining trust,” he said, describing how his efforts to gain trust for a revamped Edmondson Village Shopping Center, in Gray’s district, have been “so gratifying.”

Gray did not pursue the question further.

Council vice chair Sharon Green Middleton then recalled her friendship with the Ballard Spahr attorney, who recently retired as a City Hall lobbyist only to take up the chairmanship of a ballot committee supporting David Bramble’s high-rise apartment plan at Harborplace, denouncing a tweet by an opponent of the plan as racial stereotyping.

“I’ve known you since I started as a Council member,” said Middleton, the body’s longest serving member (since 2007). “I know you have traveled throughout Baltimore, and I’m confident you are familiar with every neighborhood – our impoverished neighborhoods and the struggles they have. So I’m confident you will do a good job.”

Laria returned her endorsement by extending his praise to the full Council, especially to its new Transportation and Land Use chair, Ryan Dorsey.

Dorsey, he said, has “a very bold agenda on land-use policy” that is now being tried out in his northeast district.

Last November, Dorsey championed a rezoning overlay along Harford Road to promote apartment construction in traditional single-family neighborhoods. The goal is to increase density, walkability and transit-oriented development along the corridor (here and here).

“This is a really important discussion to have,” Laria said, alluding to the city’s continued population loss.

“How do you get people back,” he mused.

“You have persistence and telling a great story,” he said, pointing to recent media accounts of a Baltimore renaissance.

“And thanks to the mayor, the president of the City Council and others, that narrative is growing, and we need to keep telling it loudly,” he declared.

Eating an Elephant

McBeth, meanwhile, stressed reforming DOT, telling Council President Zeke Cohen and others that the place where she worked between 2014 and 2018 is beset with “challenges.”

“I want to be realistic with you – the challenges we face are significant,” she said in a prepared statement. “As my mentor once said, ‘How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.’ We will move deliberately but consistently and focus on sustainable improvements rather than quick fixes.”

Declaring “I despise government waste,” McBeth vowed to reduce DOT’s reliance on consultants and contractors.

The Brew has documented for year how this pattern of outsourcing contributes to the agency’s legacy of cost overruns, construction delays and rampant EWOs (Extra Work Orders). Here, here and here.

“We will make a push to increase full-time and staff capacity, while decreasing our reliance on contractual services that oftentimes cost significantly higher amounts than our other city counterparts,” she said.

How will this be done? By better training and creating better promotional pathways, leading to “a culture of excellence and accountability,” she explained.

Highway to Nowhere

Responding to Councilman Isaac Yitzy Schleifer’s criticism that the agency doesn’t address 311 calls about hazardous roadway and sidewalk conditions, McBeth promised to install a “robust community engagement strategy that includes standardized SOPs for consistent outreach.”

And regarding DOT’s inability to expediently handle government grants (the city had to return a $1.5 million state Greenway Trail award because of DOT didn’t meet deadlines, Cohen asserted), McBeth said she’ll grease the wheels of the 1,150-employe operation through unspecified means.

“You are eminently qualified,” Cohen said at one point, alluding to her help, as an aide to U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in securing a $85 million federal grant to remove parts of the “Highway to Nowhere.”

But he also fretted about the shortcomings of everyday transportation in Baltimore.

“I don’t see a city on the east or west coast with such a hodgepodge and mishmash of unsafe streets. There’s been a lack of aggressiveness in Baltimore about being pro-transit, being pro-growth,” Cohen said.

Circulator and Bike Share

McBeth is a refugee from the Biden administration, returning to Baltimore following the abrupt departure of Corren Johnson last December.

In 2023 and 2024, McBeth was deputy assistant secretary of transportation policy under Buttigieg, providing guidance on equity, environmental justice, workforce development and other issues, according to her LinkedIn profile.

Before that, she was a senior advisor at the Federal Transit Administration and an associate planner at Kittelson & Associates.

Her tenure as Baltimore’s transit bureau chief took place after Barry Robinson, the former transit chief, pleaded guilty to taking $90,000 in bribes, which included stealing and selling surplus Charm City Circulator bus shelters (here and here).

She ran the bureau for four years (2014-18) supervising the Circulator service, which she said in her LinkedIn profile was made into “one of the most successful, reliable and free transit options in Baltimore City.”

She also oversaw the Baltimore Bike Share system, which began in 2016 under her leadership, was suspended in 2017 after many rental bikes were stolen or damaged and braked to a permanent halt in August 2018, or six months after she left the agency (here and here).

Two programs that McBeth cites as accomplishments during her tenure here:

Pushing to completion the Maryland Avenue Cycle Track between Mount Vernon and Lower Charles Village and spearheading The Big Jump, whose Jersey Barrier path protects cyclists and walkers along traffic-saturated Druid Park Lake Drive and 28th Street.

McBeth’s salary as DOT director has not been disclosed. Her predecessor, Corren Johnson, earned over $218,000 a year.