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Council pauses bill to require prior approval of professional services; requests quarterly reporting
Summary
After a review of hundreds of purchase orders and contracts, the council agreed to delay a proposed ordinance that would require council sign-off on professional services and instead asked finance and legal staff to provide a quarterly report with a refined list of consultancies for targeted oversight.
The Wicomico County Council on July 1 declined to advance a draft ordinance that would have required council review before the county executed many professional-services contracts. Instead, council members asked staff to produce a quarterly report of professional-services expenditures and to return with a proposed process that balances transparency and administrative practicality.
Background: Council members raised concerns about the scale and scope of paid consultants, the degree to which outside consultants are relied on for institutional knowledge and the absence of a single, searchable classification for “professional services” in the county’s financial system. Staff responded that the existing spreadsheet of purchase-order–based professional services is incomplete because some fees (for example, bond counsel or consultants billed through settlement) do not appear on purchase orders.
Staff recommendation: Finance Director Pam Olin and legal staff recommended tabling the ordinance and using the current fiscal quarter to collect more complete data before the council debates a codified approval requirement. Olin said that forward-looking reporting tied to purchase orders and check runs would provide a more complete, auditable record with less manual rework than reconstructing the prior-year ledger.
Council direction: Council members said they do not want to micromanage day-to-day procurement but want to prevent surprises (for example, sustained, high-value consulting arrangements that have not been clearly communicated). The council asked staff to deliver a standardized quarterly report that includes high-value consulting contracts, multi-year retained consultants and any non–purchase-order engagements such as bond counsel or settlement-paid advisors. The council also asked staff to suggest whether discrete contract types should be tagged in the general ledger for easier reporting over time.
Next steps: Staff will begin producing the quarterly report for the current fiscal quarter and return with draft policy recommendations in a work session. A public hearing on the originally introduced bill remains on the July 15 agenda but staff said they will work with the council to refine the approach before any final vote.
