It’s no secret that Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Cumming has seized on the city’s dysfunctional trash and recycling collection operation with a watchdog’s fervor.

After four damning reports published before and after the death of sanitation worker Ronald Silver II from overheating on a broiling August day, Cumming put out a hefty 48-page report that has gotten less attention, but is arguably the most troubling of them all.

There are pages and pages of disturbing facts and data in the OIG’s report, which will be the subject of a City Council hearing today at 4:30 at City Hall that will be live-streamed on Charm TV.

But it’s the victim blaming and callous indifference – expressed by top-level management – that really stands out.

“They can be replaced,” the then-head of the Bureau of Solid Waste wrote about sanitation workers on June 20, or six weeks before Silver’s death, according to the IG’s latest report.

His comment came after Cumming had laid out to him and other managers the conditions she found at BSW’s Cherry Hill sanitation yard, including early morning temperatures inside a so-called “cooling trailer” exceeding 80ºF.

“When employees . . . are disgruntled in a union shop environment, this is what you get,” wrote Craig Jeter (unnamed in the report but identified by The Brew), who went on to argue that workers, not management, should be held accountable “for accidents, not wearing PPE and abusing equipment.”

Here’s what another official wrote last August 3, a day after Silver died on the job of hyperthermia or heat sickness.

“If we can demonstrate that we have provided the resources and the training, it’s the employees’ lack of working with management” that’s to blame, the unnamed person in charge of Environmental and Regulatory Compliance and Safety wrote.

“My beloved Algebra II teacher used to shake her head and say you can lead a horse to water; but, you can’t make them drink,” the official quipped. (This person is not named in the report but has been identified by The Brew as Andrea Buie-Branam.)

This was how, after her office’s six-months-long investigation, Cumming summed up her findings on the Bureau of Solid Waste, comprised of roughly 750 full time employees, roughly half of whom are assigned to the eastside Bowley’s Lane yard and the westside Cherry Hill yard:

“An adverse work environment and negative culture that has existed for the last decade [creating] great concern for worker safety, morale and general welfare.”

[BELOW: The full OIG Baltimore report synopsis, including recommendations and DPW’s official response.]

OIG Public Synopsis 25-0004-I March 5 by Fern Marie

Pressure to Work Fast

Responding to Silver’s death, Public Works Director Khalil Zaied and Mayor Brandon Scott said the problems that the IG identified go back decades – “before Brandon Scott even drew breath,” the mayor often says – but pledged there would be a culture change and accountability.

“The mayor will hold me accountable. I will hold my management accountable,” Zaied told the City Council in August, listing a host of new policies, added procedures and future facility upgrades.

But in six months after Zaied’s testimony – a period that coincided with the death of another solid waste worker, who was crushed by a trash truck in November – Cumming’s office found dozens of continuing problems at the agency.

Among them:

• Workers were still not subject to performance reviews, encouraging a culture of favoritism and retaliation.

• A “task work” system instituted years ago in lieu of increased pay – allowing workers to speed through their routes in order to get overtime assignments – created an incentive to work fast and pressure to ignore illness and injuries.

• Workers who reported an injury a day or more after it happened were subject to discipline.

• Supervisors reportedly tolerated and participated in drug and alcohol use on the job.

• The Mercy Medical Center clinic that injured or ill workers are exclusively sent to frequently failed to conduct physical exams.

• A human resources manager spent $2,500 to have the agency’s workers comp vendor spy on an employee, even though the worker had no compensation claim on file.

This surveillance, Cumming wrote, “yielded no substantial results,” but created “an appearance of retaliatory actions and “potentially encroached on an employee’s right to privacy.”

$82,000 for Faulty Jackets

One of the more striking findings in the report was that, even after two worker deaths, so little care was taken by DPW to protect workers from the cold and other environmental conditions.

Numerous employees told the IG they had difficulty obtaining jackets, uniforms and boots this winter, saying the allocation of one work boot per year wasn’t enough.

• On a day in December when temperatures were in the 20s and low 30s, the IG observed many workers at the Bowley’s Lane and Cherry Hill yards without uniforms or gloves.

“Some who had been with DPW past their six-month probation period stated they had never received a winter jumper or gloves,” she pointed out.

DPW ordered 676 battery-powered heated jackets for $82,134. But Cumming discovered they didn’t have insulated hoods and the batteries were weak and not waterproof.

• A worker recalled having the sole of their shoe fall off from the wear and tear of working in city streets and alleys.

“The supervisor explained that the worker had to duct tape the sole and shoe back together,” Cumming reported.

• DPW ordered 676 battery-powered heated jackets for $82,134 – or $121.50 per jacket. But Cumming discovered the jackets didn’t have insulated hoods and the batteries were not waterproof and did not last through a normal workday.

“The battery pack’s power lasted two hours while the jacket was on the high-heat setting, which would be needed in extreme cold temperatures.”

“Do we need a consent decree?”

Remarking on the Cumming report on his WBAL 1090 radio show last week, host Bryan Nehman stated the obvious:

“Why is that such a hard thing? Boots or a uniform for someone who, quite frankly, doesn’t make a whole lot of money?”

For co-host Clarence “C4” Mitchell IV, the toxic culture seemingly hardwired into the solid waste operation called to mind the federal consent decree that was imposed to purge the Baltimore Police Department of its toxic culture.

“Why should we not want a similar process?” Mitchell asked, adding:

“Where there is a third party overseeing the Department of Public Works to make sure that the things we’re talking about don’t happen again [after] two people tragically lose their lives?”