A former Howard County hearing examiner is calling out the County Council for voting in closed session not to renew her contract last spring, saying the decision appears politically motivated and should have been made in open session.

Katherine Taylor, a lawyer who had served as a county hearing examiner since January 2020, said she received a phone call May 8 advising her that the council voted 3-2 earlier that day not to renew her contract. Her term ended June 30.

While Taylor said she accepted that her contract hadn’t been renewed, she voiced concern about a lack of transparency around the matter.

“What I do not accept is the way this was done: quietly, without transparency, under the guise of a ‘personnel matter,’ and apparently in response to pressure from a few unhappy landowners,” Taylor wrote in an Oct. 6 letter to the council, which was obtained by The Banner.

This past winter, Taylor handed down decisions in two contentious cases: a go-kart track built on a western Howard County property without permission and a land-use dispute involving Manor Hill Brewing in Ellicott City and its neighbors.

“Because there was no rational basis provided for the decision, I can only surmise that the decision not to renew my contract was based on pressure from those individuals involved with the high-profile cases mentioned above,” Taylor wrote.

The Maryland Open Meetings Act allows governmental bodies to discuss personnel matters in closed session, but Taylor noted that she was an independent contractor, not a county employee. The council did not announce or ratify the decision in open session.

“I felt like I needed to speak out because I don’t believe this is the way our local government should be acting,” Taylor said in an interview.

Council Chair Liz Walsh agrees. As chair, Walsh reviews the council agendas ahead of meetings, but she said that specific agenda item “was a total hijack situation. It wasn’t clear to me what we were going to talk about.”

Walsh and council member Deb Jung confirmed they both voted against the motion to remove Taylor.

“I am still furious about it, it was so disgusting,” Walsh said.

Howard County hearing examiners make decisions on land use and zoning cases, including approving conditional uses and handling appeals of administrative decisions, according to the county website. Their decisions can be appealed to the county’s board of appeals.

The council announced Taylor and Joyce Nichols as county hearing examiners on Jan. 6, 2020. Nichols had served for more than two decades as a zoning hearing examiner in Prince George’s County. Taylor saw the appointment as a homecoming, as she once was a senior assistant county solicitor.

Taylor said that both she and Nichols were paid $200 an hour.

In 2021, the council voted to allow hearing examiners to act as fact finders for the zoning board in complex cases. The examiners assumed that duty in 2023.

Taylor wrote that the council’s decision to let her go “followed on the heels” of her decisions in two high-visibility cases that not only drew media attention but involved “well-connected and wealthy landowners.”

In March, Taylor agreed with the county Department of Planning and Zoning that a go-kart track was not a permitted activity under the county code. A western Howard County resident had built a track on his property without permission, setting off a fight with neighbors. Taylor dismissed homeowner Chris Siperko’s conditional use petition, citing a lack of jurisdiction. Siperko appealed to the board of appeals, which approved the track in July.

A month earlier, Taylor issued a decision in a case pitting Manor Hill Brewing against residents of Manor Lane. For years, neighbors had voiced objections to the brewery’s location at the end of a cul-de-sac, citing traffic and pedestrian concerns.

She decided that “certain activities” on the brewery’s property needed to be investigated further by the planning and zoning department.

Taylor did not contact council members about the decision to remove her until earlier this month. When she received the news in May, she said, she was caring for her terminally ill mother, who has since died.

On May 8, the council held a budget hearing. The agenda listed a closed session for “a personnel matter,” described as “compensation, employment, performance evaluation, and assignment of one or more specific employees.”

According to Taylor’s letter, council member David Yungmann, a Republican representing western Howard County, made the motion not to renew her contract. It was seconded by Christiana Rigby. Opel Jones cast the third vote. They, like Walsh and Jung, are Democrats.

“I felt ambushed,” Jung said. “There was no reason to terminate her contract.”

Yungmann declined to comment, saying it was a personnel matter. Rigby referred a reporter to the county’s Office of Law. Jones did not reply to a request for comment.

The Office of Law also did not respond to a request for comment.

In Taylor’s letter, she requested that the council “correct the record” to say that her contract or any hearing examiner’s contract should not be discussed in closed session. She also asked the council to provide a legal justification for using a closed session to not renew her contract when the contracts previously were renewed in open session. Nichols’ contract was extended last spring.

According to the Maryland Open Meetings Act, a closed meeting can occur “to discuss the appointment, employment, assignment, promotion, discipline, demotion, compensation, removal, resignation, or performance evaluation of appointees, employees, or officials over whom this public body has jurisdiction; any other personnel matter that affects one or more specific individuals.”

Joanne Antoine, executive director of Common Cause Maryland, said the council choosing not to return to open session after the closed-door meeting is a clear violation of the Open Meetings Act.

“Them voting in closed session on a contract that has to do with public business being conducted by an appointee should have been discussed publicly, and the vote should have happened publicly,” Antoine said.

This is not the first time the council has not renewed a hearing examiner’s contract.

“The worst part of all of it, the five of us did this to the first hearing examiner when we got here,” Walsh said. “We created the backlog.”

To clear that backlog, the council hired two hearing examiners, noting it was a temporary fix. Taylor, in an interview, said she was never told having two examiners was temporary.

“It is disheartening to see local decision-making begin to mirror what we have witnessed at the national level — where individuals are removed not because they failed to perform, but because they fulfilled their responsibilities with integrity,” Taylor wrote in her letter to council.