The unredacted report by the Baltimore County auditor on the sequence of events preceding the disbursement of approximately $6.6 million in county funds to the Baltimore County Revenue Authority to help pay for the renovation of the Rocky Point Golf Course clubhouse obtained and published by The Brew elevates the controversy to another level.

A public official who knowingly spends or approves the expenditure of public funds for a purpose for which there was no lawful appropriation can be prosecuted for the crime of misconduct in office, depending on the circumstances.

The findings in the report, submitted to County Council Chairman Mike Ertel by Acting County Auditor Elizabeth Irvin in March, demand review by the Maryland Office of State Prosecutor to determine if county officials in the administrations of former county executive Johnny Olszewski and current county executive Kathy Klausmeier responsible for disbursing the $6.6 million to the Revenue Authority for the renovation should be charged with misconduct in office.

What comes through loud and clear from the auditor’s unredacted findings is that the Olszewski administration deliberately hid the fact that the budget for FY 2025 that it presented to the County Council for approval included the $6.6 million for the clubhouse renovation.

The deception was aided and abetted by the violation of two county laws intended to apprise the council of the specific projects it is being asked to approve as part of the annual budget. One violation was by the Revenue Authority and the other by the Olszewski administration.

Also, knowing what we know now, there is only one word for the redactions made to the report by the council before its release to the public in May: Cover-up.

Key Findings of Audit

In May 2024, the council approved the county budget for FY 2025 (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025). Not disclosed to the council was the fact that the budget included $6.6 million for an extensive renovation and expansion of the clubhouse at the Rocky Point Golf Course in Essex. The golf course is owned by the county but operated by the independent Revenue Authority under a 99-year ground lease that expires in 2094.

In August 2024, County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker signed a “funding agreement” that purportedly bound the county to grant the $6.6 million to the Revenue Authority for the renovation. It provided for disbursement of the grant by periodic draws as construction costs were incurred and invoices submitted.

The agreement, approved for form and legal sufficiency by County Attorney James Benjamin, was not submitted to the council for review as required by county law.

Council members and the public only became aware of the agreement when Olszewski announced it at the groundbreaking for the clubhouse renovation in October 2024.

The council responded the following May with a unanimous vote cutting the $6.6 million from the FY 2026 (July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2026) budget. Nevertheless, the Klausmeier administration continued making disbursements based on the $6.6 million grant, claiming that it used money from unused funds appropriated in fiscal years prior to FY 2026 to do so.

Council Must Demand Answers

CAO Walker and Budget Director Kevin Reed should be called upon in public to explain in detail why they approved payments for the renovation, especially after the council removed the $6.6 million earmarked for the renovation in the FY 2026 budget.

And County Attorney James Benjamin needs to tell us why a legal analysis sent to the council on May 16, 2025 was signed by Walker, not by him.

That analysis attempted to justify the failure by the Olszewski administration to follow procedures set forth in county law before Walker signed the “funding agreement” in August 2024.

Even if the council isn’t interested, county residents have the right to hear their answers.

• Klausmeier administration’s ridiculous explanation for funding a pet project of the former county executive (6/29/26)

• UPDATE: Previously withheld auditor’s report sheds light on Olszewski administration’s scheme to fund clubhouse (6/29/26)

• Six former Baltimore County Council members  urge release of full audit of Rocky Point Clubhouse (9/1/26)

• Previously censored audit of Rocky Point Clubhouse points to charter and code violations by Olszewski and Klausmeier administrations (9/9/26)

Abusing a Budget Practice

Under Section 709 of the charter, the county executive has sole control over the form of the budget presented to the council for approval.

Auditor Irwin acknowledged that, in theory, the use of non-lapsing “bulk” capital projects by county executives “provides flexibility in the timing and application of funds” to ongoing tasks of a similar nature.

For example, because it serves no useful purpose to designate each curb or gutter in the county needing repair or replacement as a separate capital project, curb and gutter projects are grouped together under a single “bulk” capital project name and number.

But in reference to the bulk capital project used to fund the clubhouse renovation (Project 210P069), the auditor found that “the exercise of flexibility … is not accompanied by clear identification of how funding decisions related to the underlying project framework or changes in project scope or location or by contemporaneous disclosure to the Council to support meaningful oversight.”

Translated, it means that there was nothing in the budget materials submitted to the council that would put lawmakers on notice when approving the FY25 budget that a bulk capital project historically used to provide funding to the Revenue Authority for maintenance and improvements to parking facilities included funding for what amounted to a brand-new clubhouse for the Rocky Point Golf Course.

I’ll take it a step further: Any competent – and transparent – administration would have broken out the $6.6 million rebuild of a golf course clubhouse into a separate capital project rather than bury it in a bulk project like Project 210P069.

Bait and Switch

The auditor further noted that during consideration of the FY 2022 budget the Olszewski administration reported that the proposed funding for Project 210P069 included a $500,000 county contribution toward improvements at the existing clubhouse “in response to legislative budget analysis questions.”

The scope of the work was limited to an enclosed event pavilion, commercial kitchen, and small, 30-seat grill/dining area within the existing facility for a total cost of $1 million.

Sometime between early 2021 and 2024 the project morphed into a complete rebuild of the clubhouse with a new commercial kitchen, event space that would seat about 180 people, a new 24-30 seat mixed grille area, new restrooms, and pro shop and storage space for approximately 75 golf carts. The new cost: $8.5 million.

In other words, Rocky Point went from a small facility catering to golfers to the type of facility usually found at private country clubs, with its event space competing with private businesses in the area for wedding receptions and other gatherings.

No one in the administration bothered to disclose to the council that the transformation would cost the county an additional $6.6 million until Olszewski announced it at the groundbreaking in October 2024.

Maybe Reed, who has been the county’s budget and finance director since January 2023, can explain why.

County Charter Violated

As if hiding the renovation in a bulk project was not enough, specific laws intended to make sure that a project like this does not sneak past the council were violated.

Under Section 716 of the Baltimore County Charter, “capital projects may not be commenced, nor funds expended, committed, encumbered, or pledged by the Revenue Authority without advance written notice to both the County Council and the County Executive.”

The auditor found that “available materials reviewed do not include documentation indicating that such notice was provided in connection with the Rocky Point project, or that any such notice identified the project with sufficient specificity to support meaningful Council oversight.”

For something to constitute “notice” under the law, it must be reasonably specific. The description of Project 210P069 as generally referring to “other collaborative initiatives” is not nearly enough.

The burden was not on the council to ask whether there was a project other than routine garage facility maintenance and repair in the FY 2025 budget under Project 210P069, it was on the Revenue Authority (and the County Executive) to bring it to the council’s attention.

Violation of the Code

Section 716 of the charter was not the only notice provision violated. The county does not appropriate money directly to the independent Revenue Authority.

Instead, it is authorized by Section 9-1-114 of the county code to “make grants of money” to the authority for its projects.

Section 3-10-103(e) of the county code governs the approval of grants. The Olszewski administration was required to give notice to the council of the proposed grant of $6.6 million to the authority before Walker purported to commit the county to it in the August 2024 “funding agreement.”

That notice would have given any of the council’s seven members the right to bring the proposed grant before the body for a formal vote on whether to approve it.

According to the auditor, no such notice was given to the council. Rather, CAO Walker ridiculously claimed in a May 16, 2025 memorandum to the council that no notice was required because the funding called for by the August 2024 agreement was not a grant, even though the language of the agreement repeatedly identified it as such.

Where’s the County Attorney?

One thing that jumped out not only to the auditor, but also to Tom Quirk, Vicki Almond and four other former lawmakers who publicly pressed the council to release the auditor’s unredacted report, was that Walker, not Benjamin, signed the May 16, 2025 memorandum.

Reminding their successors that the county attorney serves as legal advisor to the council as well as to the executive, they questioned why the council’s inquiry was answered by Walker rather than Benjamin.

In one of the few times he has ever written a legal opinion made available to the public, Benjamin’s defense of the failure of other county officials to take action to remove Cathy Bevins from her seat because she had moved out of her district was, in my opinion, laughable.

So far, the council has protected Benjamin from having to choose between writing another laughable opinion or one that contradicts CAO Walker.

If the council works up enough nerve to ask their own attorney tough questions, they can ask for his opinion on whether the disbursement of funds to the Revenue Authority for the clubhouse in FY 2026 also violated Section 715 of the county charter.

Yet Another Violation

Section 715 of the charter prohibits county agencies from spending or contracting to spend any money “in excess of the amounts appropriated or allotted for the same general classification of expenditure in the budget” for the current fiscal year.

It also provides that “no such payment shall be made nor any obligation or liability incurred over $100 … unless the director of budget and finance shall first certify that the funds for the designated purpose are available,” and that “any contract . . . made in violation of this section shall be null and void, and if any officer, agent or employee of the county shall knowingly or willfully violate this provision, such action shall be cause for his removal from office (emphasis added).”

Klausmeier administration officials acknowledged that the council had barred them from using money in the FY 2026 budget to pay for the $6.6 million grant to the Revenue Authority.

They claimed that they used money from funds appropriated but unused in prior fiscal years to do so. And Budget Director Reed contended that the county had to honor its commitments, referring to the August 2024 agreement.

I believe that it was proper to use funds from prior fiscal years only if those funds were lawfully appropriated and encumbered for the purpose of the $6.6 million grant in one of those prior fiscal years.

Given the two separate violations of county law identified by the auditor, I doubt that the state prosecutor will have much trouble concluding that the “obligation” for the clubhouse grant was not lawfully incurred by the funding agreement executed in FY 2025 and, as a consequence, no county funds from that grant were legally “available” for use on clubhouse renovation in FY 2025 or FY 2026.

In summary, there were two laws violated – and probably a third – in the course of obtaining the council’s phantom approval of the funding for the $6.6 million grant and then disbursing payments based on the grant to the Revenue Authority.

Hiding Behind Redactions

The redactions made to the auditor’s report were beyond outrageous, cutting out not only the auditor’s recommendations, but also her findings and conclusions.

Legislative Counsel Thomas Bostwick, who apparently made the redactions, stated that disclosure of the unredacted report would have a “chilling effect” on the “free exchange” of analysis and advice to council members and “would inhibit creative debate and discussion or impair the integrity of the Council’s decision making process.”

Assuming that the privilege to deny disclosure of pre-decisional and deliberative materials applied, exercising it was a matter of discretion, with any feared “chilling effect” to be weighed against the public interest served by disclosure.

What possible argument could there be that county taxpayers don’t have the absolute right to see a report by the county auditor raising serious questions about whether $6.6 million of their money used to renovate a golf course clubhouse was lawfully appropriated?

There isn’t a sentient being in the county who doesn’t realize that the redactions were intended to insulate council members from public pressure to act on the report. And, not surprisingly, Council Chairman Ertel and his six colleagues, including the Democratic Party’s nominee for county executive, Councilman Julian E. Jones Jr., have done nothing about it in the six months since they received it.

Code of Silence

The Rocky Point clubhouse saga has placed the contempt of county officials for the basic rights of residents to a transparent and accountable government on full display, from the obfuscation and abuse of the budgetary process by the Olszewski and Klausmeier administrations to the unconscionable redactions to a report issued by the county auditor.

It also demonstrates that there is a code of silence applicable to both branches of county government, with elected county officials habitually covering for each other.

With the county’s Office of Inspector General rendered practically useless (what a coincidence), the best chance for an investigation into whether individual county officials should be held accountable for the wrongdoing uncovered by the auditor, lies with the state prosecutor, Charlton T. Howard III.

I believe the kind of behavior revealed by the her report has gone unchallenged for so long in Baltimore County because both elected and appointed officials are convinced that they’ll never be held accountable.

Until that perception changes, the behavior will continue.

• 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.