Three months after his departure from Baltimore’s beleaguered public works department, former Director Jason Mitchell is re-joining the city as a contractor for his old agency.

Baltimore’s mayor-controlled spending board approved a contract Wednesday to pay the former Department of Public Works director $125 an hour to consult on a range of department planning and decision-making responsibilities. The agreement, which caps Mitchell at 576 hours or $72,000, passed the five-member Board of Estimates without discussion as part of a routine agenda read at the beginning of the meeting. Comptroller Bill Henry abstained from the vote.

According to the spending board request, Mitchell’s work for the Department of Public Works resumed two weeks before the approval, on Sept. 20, though city documents provided contradictory timelines for the job. The board agenda stated the length of the agreement as one year, while a version of the contract provided by the comptroller’s office said it would terminate after six months.

Mitchell returns after a turbulent run in the final months of his tenure. His resignation announcement in January came hours after two council members wrote a letter threatening to demand that he step down. At the time, Mitchell planned to resign in April, citing family and health reasons, but later opted to stay in the role through the close of the fiscal year at the end of June.

Mitchell, who came to Baltimore after serving as city administrator and public works head in Oakland, California, returns to his former department even as Interim Director Richard Luna, formerly the deputy director of public works, has been leading the agency since his departure.

Under the agreement approved Wednesday, Mitchell will advise the public works department in numerous areas, including streamlining internal processes, long-term solid waste planning, and negotiations with officials overseeing the department’s federal consent decree.

Comptroller Bill Henry, one of two spending board members not part of the Scott administration, abstained Wednesday from voting on Mitchell’s contract, pointing after the meeting to a possible conflict since both officials serve on a regional task force evaluating changes to the governance of the Baltimore-area water system.

The mayor is in a “tough spot” trying to find a permanent replacement for Mitchell right now, said Henry, who explained that he understands the decision to pay for the former director’s expertise on a temporary basis. With a primary election just months away, the comptroller said it has to be a challenge for Scott to find “new blood” to lead the Department of Public Works. In the meantime, Luna is essentially working two jobs to fill his former role and lead the agency, the comptroller noted.

Under Mitchell’s leadership, the Department of Public Works seemed to move from managing one crisis to the next. A year ago, an E. coli scare in the water system left tens of thousands of residents in West Baltimore and the surrounding area under a boil-water advisory for days. Reports released during Mitchell’s tenure unearthed urgent and deep-rooted environmental problems at the city’s wastewater plants at Back River and Patapsco. The city’s weekly recycling services have operated on an on-again, off-again basis since the start of the pandemic and remain scaled back today – a point that prompted council members Zeke Cohen and Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer to issue their ultimatum in January.

All of this played out as the agency has managed hundreds of vacant positions and a staffing shortage exacerbated by the pandemic.

At a news conference after Wednesday’s Board of Estimates meeting, Scott stressed that Mitchell needed to take time away earlier this year because of family responsibilities. The mayor praised Luna’s leadership of the public works department and endorsed the need for Mitchell to help out on an array of agency responsibilities.

adam.willis@thebaltimorebanner.com