This morning, the Board of Estimates voted on the Baltimore Police Department's Professional Services Agreement with idfive for targeted marking efforts.

"On the one hand, we’ve got the Baltimore Police Department asking the Board of Estimates to approve an agreement "not to exceed $1 Million" in value. Even though the City only has $500,000 in funding currently available, we fully expect to receive another $500,000.  From the BPD’s perspective, I understand that it seems like a waste of valuable time to not only come back for authorization to spend the second pot of money, but also have to submit a contract amendment, necessitating a second contract review.  Given how long contract review can take, doing so could create a delay in spending the funds and meeting our recruitment goals for the consent decree. 

On the other hand, what I’m hearing from the City Auditor is that this isn’t the best way to do it. In this situation, the BPD really should have drafted an agreement with an initial value of $500,000 and just accepted the fact that they would have to come back later to amend the agreement. The fact that doing it the right way takes longer isn’t in and of itself a good reason to not do it.

I think the option that neither have focused on is the importance of working to make contract review less time-consuming. If we can make our process more effective and efficient, I would hope that this would be the last contract like this that comes before the Board.  My office will be working internally to make this happen and we hope to work collaboratively with the Administration on making sure that all of the different parts of contract review are appropriately staffed and otherwise resourced to do their jobs expeditiously." - Comptroller Bill Henry