Baltimore County Inspector General Kelly Madigan concluded that the payment of $83,675 to Philip Tirabassi by the administration of County Executive Johnny Olszewski Jr. in settlement of his claim against the county was proper.

The most remarkable thing about her conclusion is that information included in her report refuted the reason given for the settlement by Olszewski himself, an important finding that the IG did not mention.

The party line, which Madigan noted in her report, is that the county feared that Tirabassi would sue to enforce an “unauthorized” offer of settlement sent to Tirabassi’s lawyer by a former assistant county attorney identified as Michael Raimondi.

Language quoted by the IG from an email, however, makes clear that the county was in no danger of having the draft agreement enforced, which reflects the position initially taken by the county and then changed without explanation, according to internal records.

The result is that we are left with no satisfactory answer as to why $83,675 was paid to Tirabassi to settle a claim that the County determined to be baseless.

The two things that we do know are that Tirabassi, with both business and personal ties to Olszewski, lobbied administration officials long and hard on behalf of his claim, and that the payment to him was hidden from the County Council and from the public in violation of county law.

The Claim

Tirabassi’s claim was that, after he resigned from the Baltimore City Fire Department to become a Baltimore County firefighter in 1989, the county failed to advise him of a 1990 state law that would have allowed him to transfer a little over two years of pension “service credit” earned in the city to the Baltimore County pension plan.

Under the state law, Tirabassi had until June 30, 1991 to submit a claim to the county for transfer of the service credit.

• Previous Brew Coverage – The Tirabassi Affair

Tirabassi missed the deadline and did not begin to actively pursue his claim until mid-2018, which was 27 years too late. His efforts intensified after Olszewski took office in December 2018.

By letter dated April 22, 2019, former County Director of Budget and Finance Keith Dorsey denied Tirabassi’s claim as untimely. Shortly thereafter, Dorsey retired. He was replaced by Ed Blades, who reviewed Dorsey’s decision at Olszewski’s request.

Blades also denied Tirabassi’s request for transfer of service credit in a letter dated September 10, 2019.

The Settlement

Blades’ decision was hardly the end of the back and forth, as described in Madigan’s 27-page report.

On January 29, 2020, Raimondi sent the draft of a possible settlement agreement to Tirabassi’s lawyer.

In July of this year (2024), Olszewski told reporters from the Sun that Raimondi sent the agreement without authorization or informing him or County Attorney James Benjamin.

Olszewski also said that Tirabassi threatened to sue after the county tried to back out of the settlement.

As a result, the county opted to settle to protect the county from that litigation after county leadership “learned of this unauthorized agreement and expressed concerns,” the county executive said.

Madigan reported that, until April 2020, internal documents reflected that the county had no intention of settling the threatened litigation. Then came this:

“By April 2020, the position of the county had changed such that the county was amenable to a settlement with Tirabassi. The internal emails reviewed provided no clear explanation for this shift. However, interviews conducted by the Office revealed that one of the reasons was the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic and its effect on county government.” (IG report, p. 9.)

Madigan also reported:

“In numerous emails reviewed by the Office surrounding this time period [April-May 2020], the administration and [Office of Law] continued to state the reason to settle with Tirabassi would be due to ‘the error by [Raimondi]’ as otherwise, the county believed it had a strong position that Tirabassi had received notice of his opportunity to transfer the city time and simply failed to do so during the required time period.” (IG report, p. 10.)

The IG quotes the email from Raimondi that transmitted the draft settlement agreement to Tirabassi’s lawyer as stating: “I have not yet had an opportunity to run this agreement by my superiors, so this is subject to their approval as to the wording, sufficiency of form and content.”

That disclaimer came against the backdrop of settled Maryland law holding that “no representation, statement, promises or acts of ratification by officers of a [municipal] corporation can operate to estop it to assert the invalidity of a contract where such officers were without power to enter into such a contract on behalf of the corporation.”

Consequently, even if Raimondi did mislead Tirabassi’s lawyer about his authority, it would not have stopped the county from refusing to implement the agreement.

In fact, Raimondi made clear that he didn’t have the power to bind the county to the agreement. It was subject to approval by his “superiors,” and they didn’t approve it. End of story.

The Pretext

The initial position taken by the county was correct:

The threat to sue to enforce the draft settlement agreement was a hollow one. The IG presumably knows the law and should have pointed that out because it gives rise to this obvious question:

If neither Tirabassi’s original claim nor his threat to sue to enforce the draft settlement agreement had merit, then what was the explanation for the “shift” in the county’s position in April 2020 toward reaching a financial settlement with him?

The administration had to come up with some explanation for the settlement. Publicly attributing it to the “onset of the global COVID-19 pandemic,” as some unnamed officials apparently suggested to Madigan, would have sounded pretty silly.

In my opinion, blaming it on Raimondi’s “error” was a pretext.

Without a cogent explanation, an $83,675 settlement to someone with personal and business ties to the county executive, as identified by The Brew, may not be a smoking gun. But it is highly suspicious – and puts Tirabassi’s cash settlement in an entirely different light.

No wonder this settlement was hidden under the false name of “Philip Dough,” an action that Madigan bent over backwards to find was not “malicious.”

A Telling Email

On June 20, 2020, former County Administrative Officer Stacy Rodgers described the Tirabassi settlement in an email to Olszewski’s former chief of staff Pat Murray as “just so wrong on so MANY levels.”

The county did have an extremely strong defense against Tirabassi’s claim for a service credit transfer, but the alleged “error” by Raimondi was no reason to settle, either.

I don’t understand why there is no mention in Madigan’s report of any attempt to question Rodgers on what she meant by those words.

I’ve read countless reports by police officers and other investigators in a wide variety of matters. Key witnesses and individuals who may possess important information are interviewed and, if they cannot be interviewed, the reasons are noted in the report.

Sometimes the refusal of individuals to be interviewed speaks volumes, and that certainly would apply in this case to Rodgers if she failed to cooperate.

In summary, we have a matter involving a person with ties to Olszewski, in which Olszewski took a personal interest, and ends up in a payment of $83,675 to that person that lacks clear justification and was secreted from the County Council and the public.

This is not proof of wrongdoing, but I’d hardly call it an exoneration. Especially when it appears that the IG may not have interviewed people who could shed light on exactly how, and by whom, the decision was made to settle with the county firefighter.

• David A. Plymyer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney after 31 years in the county law office. To reach him: dplymyer@comcast.net and Twitter @dplymyer.