New information has come out that casts the actions taken by the administration of former Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski to hide county funding for the Rocky Point Golf Course clubhouse renovation from the county council and the public in an even harsher light.

The level of chicanery was greater than initially known, and it now appears that the Olszewski administration intentionally deceived the Baltimore County Council on the scope of the project, which in turn raises the question whether the disbursement of county funds to the Baltimore County Revenue Authority under a so-called “funding agreement” for the renovation was lawful.

The more serious that the conduct by the administration now appears to be, the more culpable the council is for covering it up.

Sometime in late 2024, the council learned that county funds were being used to help the independent revenue authority pay for an extensive renovation of the clubhouse during FY 2025, which ran from July 1, 2024 to June 30, 2025.

The purported source of the authority for the use of the funds was a funding agreement signed by County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker in August 2024 that approved a grant of $6.6 million to the revenue authority for that purpose and bound the county to continue the funding through FY 2027.

The council approved the use of $500,000 in county funds for improvements to the clubhouse in FY 2022. It was never informed that the scope of the project, and the size of the commitment, had changed dramatically.

As reported by The Banner, the clubhouse renovation was a pet project of Olszewski. In January 2025, Kathy Klausmeier was appointed to succeed Olszewski, who had been elected to Congress.

During a hearing in May 2025 on Klausmeier’s proposed FY 2026 budget, councilmen Julian E. Jones Jr. and Todd K. Crandell asked administration representatives why the $6.6 million grant had not gone through the grant approval process mandated by county law, which includes 14-days’ notice of a proposed grant to the council and the opportunity for lawmakers to reject it.

• Unofficial Baltimore County primary election results (6/29/26)

The following day, Walker, an Olszewski appointee, responded with a memorandum to Jones, Crandell and Council Chair Mike Ertel that defended her approval of the funding without requiring it to go through the grant approval process by nonsensically claiming that the funding was not a grant even though the “funding agreement” explicitly referred to it as a grant.

The memorandum stated that the funding for the renovation came from the “accumulation of . . . unutilized balances that were previously approved by the County Council for the Revenue Authority as part of the annual Capital Budget.”

The council responded by cutting $6.6 million from the FY 2026 capital budget, formally expressing its disapproval of the use of county tax dollars for the project and pointing out that the council, which generally must approve county contracts, grants and other fiscal spending, had no oversight role in the Olszewski administration’s “unilateral approval of the funding.”

We didn’t find out until after the council approved the FY 2027 budget that, despite the budget cut, the Klausmeier administration continued to disburse funds from the grant to the revenue authority in FY 2026, based on its argument that the cuts to the FY 2026 budget came too late because the funding for the grant came from unutilized balances from prior fiscal years.

The May 16, 2025 memorandum was not made public until I obtained a copy last month by a PIA request to Budget and Finance Director Kevin Reed.

Auditor’s Report

The new information comes from a report dated March 27, 2026 prepared by Acting County Auditor Elizabeth Irvin that was recently obtained by retired county administrative officer Fred Homan, also through a PIA request.

The report pointed out that the purpose of Project 210P069, the source of the money used to help fund the clubhouse, was described until FY 2021 as follows: “This project provides grants to the [Baltimore County] Revenue Authority for the acquisition, construction, capital maintenance, improvements and general operations of parking garages.”

The language “and other collaborative initiatives” was tacked on to the description by the Olszewski administration in FY 2021.

The auditor reported that in response to “legislative budget analysis questions” raised during consideration of the proposed budget for FY 2022, the administration identified specific uses within Project 210P069, including a $500,000 county contribution toward improvements at the existing Rocky Point clubhouse.

The report stated that the administration represented to the council that the work was limited to an enclosed event pavilion, commercial kitchen, and a small, 30-seat grill/dining area within the existing facility, and that the county’s share of the estimated $1,000,000 cost of the improvements was limited to $500,000.

At some point during the next three years, the project changed from improving the clubhouse to essentially replacing it with a much grander facility.

How did that – and the jump in the county’s share of the costs from $500,000 to $6.6 million – happen without the council’s knowledge or approval?

Playing Hide-and-Seek

In her review of the August 2024 “funding agreement,” the auditor noted that “available materials reviewed do not establish when the decision to proceed with the Rocky Point project was made or how that decision was operationalized across the relevant departments,” explaining, “The sequence of internal decisionmaking, coordination across departments, and timing of approvals relative to project advancement is not clearly established in available materials.”

In short, no paper trail.

The Olszewski administration withheld important information from the council, the auditor finds.

The report further stated that the “agreement references the use of capital budget appropriations as the source of funding but does not clearly identify the relationship between those appropriations and the specific project scope described in the agreement” and “reflects a defined project scope and funding commitment that is not identified as such in contemporaneous capital budget materials” (emphasis added).

Not identifying the greatly expanded project scope and funding commitment described in the funding agreement in “contemporaneous capital budget materials” is auditor-speak for “the Olszewski administration withheld that important information from the council during consideration of the budget.”

Suspicious Redactions

In her comment on consideration of the proposed FY 2025 budget, the auditor observed that the administration’s presentation of Project 210P069 continued the “shift toward cumulative funding visibility without corresponding identification of discrete project uses.”

If the auditor was trying to tell us that the county’s increased use of bulk capital projects (aggregating supposedly similar projects into a single “project” for funding purposes) has its drawbacks, I agree with her.

As pointed out in my earlier commentary, funding to rebuild a golf course clubhouse should never have been buried in a bulk capital project used to fund costs associated with building and improving parking facilities. It should have been broken out into a separate capital project.

The auditor’s report was heavily redacted before being made public. The council should release of the full document.

The auditor’s report was heavily redacted before being made public. Here is the explanation for the redactions by Legislative Counsel Thomas Bostwick in an email to Homan:

“The County Auditor, whose office is part of the Legislative Branch of County Government, must be able to freely provide honest, straightforward, and frank analysis and advice to the Councilmembers – and to the Executive. Disclosure would have a chilling effect on this free exchange and would inhibit creative debate and discussion or impair the integrity of the Council’s decision making process.”

In other words, Bostwick says we should not be allowed to see the report because the auditor wouldn’t be “honest, straightforward and frank” in her reports if she knew that the public was going to read them. That doesn’t inspire much confidence in county auditors.

The council should overrule Bostwick’s decision and order release of the unredacted report.

My guess is that they won’t, and that the real reason for not doing so will be that the redacted portions contain material that is, if not incriminating, highly embarrassing to certain current and former county officials.

Independent Probe Needed

The August 2024 funding agreement was “reviewed for form and legal sufficiency and approved for execution” by County Attorney James Benjamin, also appointed by Olszewski.

Benjamin may try to argue that language governing the relationship between the county and the revenue authority in Article 9 of the county code allowed the county administrative officer to approve a grant to the revenue authority without adhering to the general grant approval process set forth in Title 10 of Article 3 of the county code.

I doubt, however, that he’ll argue that it was proper for the county administrative officer to do so if it meant, as claimed by the council in its FY 2026 budget message, that the council had no role in approving the funding for the grant either through the budget process or the grant approval process, a violation of the county charter.

The auditor’s report supports the council’s contention. The conclusion is inescapable that the Olszewski administration hid the greatly increased scope and cost of the clubhouse renovation from the council during the council’s budget deliberations for FY 2023 through FY 2025, the fiscal years that produced the “unutilized balances” that both the Olszewski and Klausmeier administrations claimed were used to fund the grant that Walker approved in August 2024.

In other words, the claim by both administrations was that the council appropriated the money to fund the grant for the expanded project without ever being told about either the grant or the expanded project.

Public officials have a duty to spend public funds only on lawfully approved programs and projects.

There should be a formal, independent investigation into whether disbursing county funds to the revenue authority pursuant to the August 2024 funding agreement violated that duty.

Keeping it Quiet

In my opinion, the Olszewski administration engaged in subterfuge because it was confident that, at the end of the day, the Baltimore County Council wouldn’t make a public fuss. And it didn’t.

The council could have referred the matter to the county’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) for investigation when it first learned about the August 2024 funding agreement or read Walker’s claim in her May 16, 2025 letter that the funding came from unused prior year appropriations.

Without a currently functional OIG, that’s no longer an option.

We only know what we know about this matter because of leaks and PIA requests.

The release of the Walker memorandum last year would have caused an immediate reaction. Release of the auditor’s report three months ago would have increased the demand for further scrutiny, which the council obviously wanted to avoid, especially in the run-up to last week’s primary election.

Elected officials of both branches of county government covering for each other and not airing their dirty linen in public is part of the corrupt mess that Baltimore County government has become.

• David A. Plymyer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney after 31 years in the county law office. He can be reached at dplymyer@comcast.net and Twitter @dplymyer.