If you think citizens have no voice----if all of the local pols are players for Wall Street Baltimore Development and not their communities------if militarized policing and Homeland Security makes policing brutal and surveillance threatening----THIS IS WHY! OUR POLS KNOW ALL THIS AND THEY ARE SILENT AS THEY POSE PROGRESSIVE IN PRETENDING TO ADDRESS THESE PROBLEMS.
Baltimore local news had a clip with Baltimore County Kamenetz who partnered with O'Malley to pay-to-play Sparrow's Point moving the assets to Obama corporate supporters while making sure the unions lost their benefits. What we all knew from that point was this large real estate parcel would become part of the global FOXCONN corporate campus and as this news clip stated------this global port management corporation along with the global investment firm HIGHSTAR(Johns Hopkins endowment) is making Port of Baltimore A FOREIGN ECONOMIC PORT. This report was the first time Baltimore media has mentioned the building of these FOXCONN factories that will hire 10,000 people. We of course feel sure most will be immigrants.
As with Maryland Assembly pol Sandy Rosenberg who literally dashed out of a public meeting where I asked that he educate Baltimore citizens on what it means to be designated a FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE-----Kamenetz of Baltimore County is just as tied to this sell-out of American, state, and Baltimore City sovereignty.
THIS IS WHY ALL OF THIS OPEN AND UNENDING FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SOARING THESE FEW DECADES IS OCCURRING---THEY DO NOT RECOGNIZE US RULE OF LAW.
I've had Baltimore media reporters acknowledging all that I shout for over a year now---but no hint allowed on Baltimore media or from global politicians. Kamenetz and O'Malley made every step look to be moving this real estate into local hands.
Below you see what was a huge pay-to-play with Chicago's Hilgo (Obama campaign donor) getting all of the salvage recycling from the Sparrow's Point Mill----hundreds of millions of dollars in profit-----and as this article says----the goal is to make Port of Baltimore a super-X Panama canal recipient of the largest cargo ships in the world tied to a FOXCONN factories right at the Port. Know what pollutes our Baltimore Harbor and Chesapeake Bay more than anything? MAKING PORT OF BALTIMORE A SUPER-CARGO SHIP PORT. Know what those FOXCONN factories do overseas? FILL THE ASIAN PORTS WITH POLLUTION----THE AIR WITH POLLUTION---AND ENSLAVE THE CITIZENS OF THESE ASIAN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES----all the goal of Baltimore City Hall------Maryland Assembly and the Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins and the Mayors they install each election.
THE LOSSES TO THE STATE AND CITY COFFERS WHEN PORT OF BALTIMORE WAS PRIVATIZED-----A BILLION DOLLARS IN PUBLIC REVENUE. THE LOSSES WHEN THE OLD MILL WAS OUTSOURCED IN DEMOLITION AND THE COST IN REAL ESTATE TO BOTH BALTIMORE CITY AND COUNTY? BILLIONS OF DOLLARS NOT TO MENTION THIS IS ALL IN THE CORPORATE TAX FREE ZONE-----WITH HEAVY CORPORATE SUBSIDY BY FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL TAXES.
All of these deals done behind closed doors is filled with fraud, corruption and needs to be re-evaluated in public interest.
This will operate just as in Asian International Economic Zones and all these pols know they are killing Baltimore and enslaving its citizens loading billions of dollars of subsidy for decades into building this mess.
Baltimore Brew
Who are the mystery buyers of Sparrows Point?A lawyer discloses that a local group has arranged to buy land that once was at the epicenter of American steelmaking
Mark Reutter July 10, 2014 at 10:46 am Baltimore Brew
A “local investment group” has agreed to buy a large chunk of the 3,000-acre Sparrows Point peninsula that once held the world’s largest steel mill, according to court papers filed on Tuesday.
The sale could breathe new life into plans for the redevelopment of the site. But the big question of the moment: who are the investors?
Gerard P. Martin, a lawyer for the current owners, claims not to know their identity, according to The Daily Record. The information has also not been disclosed by Baltimore City or Baltimore County, which have stakes in the property through infrastructure investments.
Baltimore City Solicitor George Nilson said today he “can’t provide” the name of the prospective purchaser or the identities of the investors.
A spokesman for Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said he “could not publicly disclose the prospective purchaser” and referred all questions to Hilco Global, the current owner, whose Chicago office would not reveal the identity of the possible purchasers.
Another key stakeholder is the Maryland Port Administration, which has been seeking to buy Coke Point, a 300-acre section of Sparrows Point, to contain harbor dredge and eventually for docks to accommodate an auto terminal and Panamax super-cargo ships. Negotiations with the current owners to buy Coke Point have stalled.
New ownership could also foster Kamenetz’s vision of retooling the peninsula for advanced manufacturing based on its proximity to a deep-water port and to highway and rail transportation.
Out of State Investors
The facility – which stopped making steel in June 2012 following the bankruptcy of its owner, RG Steel – was sold to a Chicago liquidator and St. Louis property developer for just $72 million. (The book value of the plant was more than $1 billion. It produced $1.49 billion in sales in 2011, but had been losing as much as $1 million a day, according to bankruptcy court papers.)
Nearly 3,000 employees and independent contractors were thrown out of work.
Recommended future uses of the Sparrows Point peninsula proposed by the Sparrows Point Partnership. (Baltimore County Development Office)
Hilco Global, the liquidator, and Environmental Liability Transfer, the redeveloper, jointly formed Sparrows Point LLC and purchased the plant from RG Steel in September 2012.
The group’s lawyer, Gerard Martin, disclosed to U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar on Tuesday that ELT had sold its share to Hilco, which in turn “has just agreed to sell a significant percentage” of the property to the local investment group.
Treated Sewage Dispute
The disclosure came as a result of a dispute between Baltimore City and ELT over the disposal of treated sewage from the city’s Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant. Under an agreement dated back to the 1940s, a large amount of treated water was piped to the steel plant rather than dumped in Back River.
Last year, ELT sought to terminate the agreement, which obligates them to take up to 40 million gallons a day of city wastewater from Back River. The city filed suit and the company agreed to let the city use the pipelines in return for a higher monthly fee.
The agreement was set to expire next month, which led to the filing of documents by Sparrows Point LLC asking for an extension of the pact to give the parties time “to close on property transfers and reach agreement on the solution to the existing water problems,” according to Martin.
_____________________________________________
Baltimore loses a billion dollars each year to its Baltimore Board of Estimates bid rigging that is so corrupt people have to take a shower after leaving a meeting. Everyone knows it is corrupt-----Federal investigations----government watchdogs and media expose all the fraud and corruption-----and yet, nothing happens to the pols or the behind doors 'corporate partners' because we have no Baltimore State's Attorney or Maryland Attorney General functioning in public justice on white collar crime and political corruption.
The article above was Baltimore County but it mirrors the deals made handing Port of Baltimore to HighStar and Johns Hopkins endowment. These deals happen every week draining tons of city revenue in pay-to-play-----racketeering----you name it. Baltimore has a $3 billion budget that could easily be $6 billion if only a Mayor of Baltimore and City Council would reform and rebuild the Baltimore Board of Estimates. A few Baltimore Charter changes expanding voice on this board----reforming what Baltimore Development Board appointments look like----moving to a social benefit policy stance and away from market-based profit stance will allow Baltimore to rebuild its local economies----rebuild the public institutions that give citizens a voice in public policy----and grow badly needed programs that would keep Baltimore from being third world.
Morgan Stanley of course still owes the city hundreds of millions of dollars in Wall Street fraud over a decade and is still busy with the frauds. All of these Wall Street bank branches moving into US International Economic Zones like Baltimore are working globally and bring no employment value......and lots of fraud, corruption, and corporate capture of Baltimore City Hall.
THIS STARTS BY BALTIMORE GOING SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC BY GETTING A VERY, VERY, VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS AND ITS WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT OUT OF BALTIMORE CITY HALL AND ALL NON-PROFITS.
Everyone knows that almost all Enterprise Zone requirements are ignored or data produced to make it look as though something is happening. The poverty jobs that do get created are filled with wage theft----workplace abuse....
ALL GIVING CORPORATIONS SUBSIDY AND TAX-FREE STATUS--------------so there is NO BENEFIT TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE.
City poised to grant job-creation extension to Morgan Stanley
Board of Estimates to give New York investment bank more time to deliver on commitment to create 1,500 jobs
August 20, 2013|By Yvonne Wenger, The Baltimore Sun
In return for the promise to bring another 650 jobs to Baltimore, city leaders are poised on Wednesday to give financial services giant Morgan Stanley more time to meet the terms of a $3.25 million loan forgiveness program.
The Board of Estimates vote comes amid public outcry over the city's plan to grant millions of dollars in aid to the $1.8 billion Harbor Point development, but some critics of that plan say the Morgan Stanley deal provides a proven return on investment.
"We made an agreement to them in good faith. We should allow the extension," said City Councilman Carl Stokes, a leading opponent of the unrelated Harbor Point plan that calls for further waterfront development.
The city and Morgan Stanley first agreed in 2003 that Baltimore would provide a series of low-interest loans in exchange for a commitment from the investment bank to create jobs. If the company created the number of jobs promised on the agreed-upon timeline, the city would forgive half of the loan debt. Baltimore was competing with other cities to attract the Morgan Stanley operations center.
The company began receiving $1.75 million in city loans at that time. A second agreement was signed in 2008 for another $1.5 million in loans, expanding the initial commitment of 600 jobs by late 2014 to 1,500 by late 2018.
From the Thames Street Wharf, Morgan Stanley now employs more than 850 people, most of whom were Maryland residents when they were hired, said Matt Burkhard, a company vice president. The Baltimore employees work in institutional securities processing, banking operations and other company functions.
Under the agreement, the company was to have had 900 employees on the payroll by last December. The requested extension would give Morgan Stanley until this December to hire the additional 50 workers.
The company is also seeking relief from its next-phase goal by reducing the number of promised positions from 1,200 by late 2015 to 1,000, said Jeffrey Pillas, chief financial officer of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public development agency. Pillas said that in granting the leeway, the city will reduce the next $500,000 loan installment to $167,000.
He said the company had reached — and exceeded — its job-creation commitments before now, and needs the extension to accommodate a hiring slowdown caused by the economy.
The company's commitment to create 1,500 jobs by the end of 2018 hasn't changed, Pillas said. To meet the final phase of the agreement, the last $500,000 loan installment would be increased to $833,000.
"They were reasonably on target, and we want the jobs," Pillas said. "It's a lot of jobs. It's 1,500 jobs, and 1,500 jobs doesn't come very frequently."
The Rev. Andrew Foster Connors, though, sees Morgan Stanley as a smaller-scale example than Harbor Point of the city's flawed economic development strategy. He is an activist with Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, known as BUILD.
"BUILD has been saying this for a number of years: The city's whole economic development strategy is empty; it's bankrupt," he said. "These corporations take taxpayers' money under promises that they don't keep, and instead of holding them accountable, our leaders offer excuses on their behalf."
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt all support giving Morgan Stanley flexibility, each said Tuesday.
The mayor called the deal prudent, said her spokesman, Travis Tazelaar. The city's loan modification reflects similar changes approved by the state, which provided a $4 million grant to Morgan Stanley through the Department of Business and Economic Development's Sunny Day Fund and a $1.5 million workforce grant.
Expansion costs for Morgan Stanley have been estimated at $42 million.
Stokes said Morgan Stanley has demonstrated good faith in fulfilling its promises to the city. He pointed out that if the company doesn't live up to its commitment, portions of the loan must be repaid in full.
The $107 million tax increment financing plan to pay for infrastructure, parks and other amenities at Harbor Point doesn't require job creation. The developer, however, agreed to voluntarily follow the city's new local hiring ordinance — pledging to hire 51 percent of new workers for the project from Baltimore. The City Council is scheduled to take a final vote on that plan next month.
"I actually see Morgan Stanley as a much better deal," Stokes said. "Both parties have kept up their end."
_______________________________________________
Hiding the real goal of community development in these temporary 'progressive posing' projects that should be REAL PUBLIC GREENHOUSE STRUCTURES that are permanent public assets for a community to build around takes all of the energy of the growing local food movement and uses it to hide the real development goals of bringing a huge global corporate campus to an area. Remember, International Economic Zones are hyper-concrete campuses -------total pollution------loads of immigrants from around the world-----AND NOTHING TO DO WITH BALTIMORE CITIZENS----THEIR WANTS AND NEEDS.
When Baltimore Board of Estimates makes THROWING MILLIONS at projects all know are simply designed to keep community residents busy until they are ready for the corporate campus-----we lose billions over a decade that would have created permanent public structures that would have spawned permanent local economies filled with public, private, and non-profit businesses.
These farms and the people behind them are probably real food advocates-----but when land is leased and not made public-------as almost all community garden space is in Baltimore----people do not connect to it as permanent. When citizens see the city handing multi-acre parcels to global investment firms citizens assume the same is coming to their communities and this kills community spirit.
Large urban farm planned for Sandtown-WinchesterBoard of Estimates approves deal Wednesday
October 24, 2012|By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore SunBaltimore's spending panel on Wednesday approved a deal to turn 75 vacant lots in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood into a large urban farm.
In a five-year deal, the Board of Estimates approved a $100 yearly lease to a partnership of two organizations — Strength to Love II and Big City Farms — for use of 75 properties in the 1800 blocks of Lorman and Kavanaugh streets for a 1.5-acre farm.
"They're setting out to find farmers who are willing to work on city-owned vacant land," Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. The company will bring fresh produce to the community for the next five years and help reduce food deserts, the mayor said.
Strength to Love II, which was founded in 1993, is a faith-based organization whose stated goal is to reduce high recidivism rates in Sandtown by providing jobs and training for ex-offenders. Big City Farms is an urban farming company that delivers its produce locally to grocery stores and restaurants.
__________________________________________
The entire Baltimore Development based on making downtown about TOURISM was declared a disaster even by Donald Schaefer and his staff decades ago------and yet, billions have been spent building the biggest convention center----then the need for hotels-----all of the revenue needed to market all this-----and now Baltimore citizens are subsidizing a Hilton ------handing huge corporate subsidy to the hotels-----and constant bankruptcy and vacancy because while sending all those billions in this worthless development------
JOHNS HOPKINS AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT WORKED AS HARD MAKING BALTIMORE CITIZENS POOR AND/OR UNEMPLOYED NOT ABLE TO SUPPORT THIS ECONOMY.
All of this was third world developing nation economy and they knew this. No doubt just waiting to install this International Economic Zone and Trans Pacific Trade Pact policies using an entire generations of Baltimore citizens to subsidize what they see being prosperous for the global rich in decades.
THAT'S WHAT ALL THIS DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT IS ABOUT-----THE GROUNDWORK FOR BALTIMORE BEING A HUB FOR THE GLOBAL RICH.
I heard a local ale house owner state that he could not stay in business because no one could afford to by his beer.
A city sparks development when it rebuilds its communities----creates local economies of small businesses and small manufacturing------pass laws that encourage strong wages and salaries-----and stop using public policy to soak all of citizens' disposable income to nothing that brings value to local economies.
Baltimore to sell land to developers for Hyatt-anchored project
Feb 25, 2009, 12:15pm EST Updated Feb 25, 2009, 12:15pm EST
Ryan Sharrow StaffBizspace Spotlight
The Baltimore City Board of Estimates approved a $4.5 million deal Wednesday to sell a block of land in downtown Baltimore to a team of developers planning to build a pair of Hyatt hotels.
A development team led by Mark Sapperstein, Benjamin Greenwald and Joseph Haskins plan to construct a 450,000-square-foot complex anchored by a Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites with a combined 300 hotel rooms.
Under the terms of the deal, the developers purchased properties at 26-36 Calvert St., 110 E. Lombard St. and 117 Water St. The redevelopment does not include the neighboring Brookshire Suites Hotel.
The $80 million “Hyatt at City Center” development also calls for a 300-space parking garage and commercial space.
The Baltimore Development Corp. estimates the development will create 450 construction jobs and 140 permanent jobs that should pump $60 million in new taxes to city coffers.
“Hyatt at City Center is another exciting private investment in the city of Baltimore, creating jobs and generating taxes in a key underutilized downtown site,” BDC President M.J. “Jay” Brodie said in a statement.
BDC began acquiring eight properties in the block in 2002 in hopes of sparking future redevelopment. The $4.5 million land sale price is equal to the appraised value of the site, BDC said.
_____________________________________________
US cities are crumbling and third world because from Clinton/Bush/Obama privatization and outsourcing combined with dismantling oversight and accountability had as a goal setting the stage for corporate looting of Federal, state, and local government coffers and they looted to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars----THIS IS WHY ARE US CITIES LOOK THIRD WORLD. Think how this will grow as the outsourcing now goes to global corporations ---we saw that already with the Defense Industry for example----and if International Economic Zone and Trans Pacific Trade Pact is left to be installed-----Americans will be colonial outposts seen as human capital to be soaked by taxation and enslaved in labor. THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION GETS BIGGER AS GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMPLETELY CONTROL OUR US CITIES. Please -----get rid of Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals and Bush/Hopkins neo-cons so we can rebuild our US cities, Rule of Law, Equal Protection, US Constitutional rights----and local domestic economies to create stable, healthy communities.
The local players who profited from all this corruption will be thrown under the bus as all this corruption will move to global players.
The growing threat of outsourcing fraud
Wednesday, October 06, 2010 Sourcing Focus.com
According to those close to the issue, a growing number of companies are at an increased risk of fraud due to outsourcing critical functions to third parties.
And the risk is greatest, it turns out, in the very locations to which a growing proportion of work is being outsourced - the world’s emerging markets.
“Fraud risks in emerging market countries are on the increase - but we’re not seeing a trend that suggests that businesses have recognised the danger,” says Neal Ysart, senior manager for forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“What’s more”, he adds, “the tightening economic conditions of recent years mean that many of those businesses have also reduced the resources available to protect themselves from fraud.”
Yet identifying fraud - during audits, for instance - isn’t always easy, as managers at the outsourcing supplier can try to control information to which a forensic team has access.
“We had one client who failed to recognise that the internal audit team they sent to India was being fed with favourable information, and was being introduced to staff who had well-rehearsed answers ready and waiting,” he says. “This meant that they had a false degree of comfort that the risk of fraud was well controlled-and it came as a shock when problems started to surface.”
In short, he says, they had totally failed to recognise that their visit was being choreographed-and as a result missed the opportunity to identify problems at an early stage.
“The key problem,” says Michele Edwards, fraud analytics global market lead at Atlanta, USA-headquartered PRGX, a specialist procurement analytics firm, “is that outsourced operations, combined with a tough economy that puts businesses under pressure, has provided an opportunity that can prove too tempting to resist.”
“As companies move operations overseas, the risks of entering into a relationship with a corrupt third party - or a third party with corrupt employees - increases,” she notes. “Companies simply aren’t putting in place the controls and procedures that will identify and prevent fraudulent activity.”
As a result, businesses such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and PRGX are receiving a growing number of calls to carry out checks on vendors in places like China and India. Yet prevention-as always-is better than cure, and both Edwards and Ysart acknowledge that firms could do more to protect themselves when establishing outsourcing relationships in the first place.
“It really reinforces the importance of putting in place good governance within an outsourcing relationship at the start,” says Alistair Maughan, a partner at international law firm Morrison & Foerster. “To do otherwise is to ignore the possibility that fraud might occur - which is an unrealistic assumption.”
Yet according to PRGX’s Edwards, companies are still entering into outsourcing relationships without building into contracts the right to carry out audits - or even assessing suppliers’ own anti-fraud controls, or codes of employee conduct.
Indeed, “a supplier’s fraudulent employees pose a greater risk than many firms imagine-and one that they do relatively little to protect themselves from,” warns Mike Pierdes, a partner with law firm Pinsent Masons.
“Under English law and that of many other jurisdictions, unless it is expressly specified in the outsourcing agreement that the outsourcing supplier is responsible for the fraudulent activities of its employees, the supplier could potentially argue that any fraud was carried out by the employee outside his or her scope of employment, and that therefore there is no vicarious corporate responsibility,” he notes.
His advice? “Outsourcing agreements must specify that the supplier is responsible to the customer for the fraudulent activities of its employees-which isn’t the law, and must be negotiated,” he says. “The contract should also ensure that fraud is stated as an uncapped liability, and typically the customer should seek an indemnity from the supplier on this type of loss.”
Baltimore local news had a clip with Baltimore County Kamenetz who partnered with O'Malley to pay-to-play Sparrow's Point moving the assets to Obama corporate supporters while making sure the unions lost their benefits. What we all knew from that point was this large real estate parcel would become part of the global FOXCONN corporate campus and as this news clip stated------this global port management corporation along with the global investment firm HIGHSTAR(Johns Hopkins endowment) is making Port of Baltimore A FOREIGN ECONOMIC PORT. This report was the first time Baltimore media has mentioned the building of these FOXCONN factories that will hire 10,000 people. We of course feel sure most will be immigrants.
As with Maryland Assembly pol Sandy Rosenberg who literally dashed out of a public meeting where I asked that he educate Baltimore citizens on what it means to be designated a FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE-----Kamenetz of Baltimore County is just as tied to this sell-out of American, state, and Baltimore City sovereignty.
THIS IS WHY ALL OF THIS OPEN AND UNENDING FRAUD AND CORRUPTION SOARING THESE FEW DECADES IS OCCURRING---THEY DO NOT RECOGNIZE US RULE OF LAW.
I've had Baltimore media reporters acknowledging all that I shout for over a year now---but no hint allowed on Baltimore media or from global politicians. Kamenetz and O'Malley made every step look to be moving this real estate into local hands.
Below you see what was a huge pay-to-play with Chicago's Hilgo (Obama campaign donor) getting all of the salvage recycling from the Sparrow's Point Mill----hundreds of millions of dollars in profit-----and as this article says----the goal is to make Port of Baltimore a super-X Panama canal recipient of the largest cargo ships in the world tied to a FOXCONN factories right at the Port. Know what pollutes our Baltimore Harbor and Chesapeake Bay more than anything? MAKING PORT OF BALTIMORE A SUPER-CARGO SHIP PORT. Know what those FOXCONN factories do overseas? FILL THE ASIAN PORTS WITH POLLUTION----THE AIR WITH POLLUTION---AND ENSLAVE THE CITIZENS OF THESE ASIAN INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC ZONES----all the goal of Baltimore City Hall------Maryland Assembly and the Baltimore Development Corporation and Johns Hopkins and the Mayors they install each election.
THE LOSSES TO THE STATE AND CITY COFFERS WHEN PORT OF BALTIMORE WAS PRIVATIZED-----A BILLION DOLLARS IN PUBLIC REVENUE. THE LOSSES WHEN THE OLD MILL WAS OUTSOURCED IN DEMOLITION AND THE COST IN REAL ESTATE TO BOTH BALTIMORE CITY AND COUNTY? BILLIONS OF DOLLARS NOT TO MENTION THIS IS ALL IN THE CORPORATE TAX FREE ZONE-----WITH HEAVY CORPORATE SUBSIDY BY FEDERAL, STATE, AND LOCAL TAXES.
All of these deals done behind closed doors is filled with fraud, corruption and needs to be re-evaluated in public interest.
This will operate just as in Asian International Economic Zones and all these pols know they are killing Baltimore and enslaving its citizens loading billions of dollars of subsidy for decades into building this mess.
Baltimore Brew
Who are the mystery buyers of Sparrows Point?A lawyer discloses that a local group has arranged to buy land that once was at the epicenter of American steelmaking
Mark Reutter July 10, 2014 at 10:46 am Baltimore Brew
A “local investment group” has agreed to buy a large chunk of the 3,000-acre Sparrows Point peninsula that once held the world’s largest steel mill, according to court papers filed on Tuesday.
The sale could breathe new life into plans for the redevelopment of the site. But the big question of the moment: who are the investors?
Gerard P. Martin, a lawyer for the current owners, claims not to know their identity, according to The Daily Record. The information has also not been disclosed by Baltimore City or Baltimore County, which have stakes in the property through infrastructure investments.
Baltimore City Solicitor George Nilson said today he “can’t provide” the name of the prospective purchaser or the identities of the investors.
A spokesman for Baltimore County Executive Kevin Kamenetz said he “could not publicly disclose the prospective purchaser” and referred all questions to Hilco Global, the current owner, whose Chicago office would not reveal the identity of the possible purchasers.
Another key stakeholder is the Maryland Port Administration, which has been seeking to buy Coke Point, a 300-acre section of Sparrows Point, to contain harbor dredge and eventually for docks to accommodate an auto terminal and Panamax super-cargo ships. Negotiations with the current owners to buy Coke Point have stalled.
New ownership could also foster Kamenetz’s vision of retooling the peninsula for advanced manufacturing based on its proximity to a deep-water port and to highway and rail transportation.
Out of State Investors
The facility – which stopped making steel in June 2012 following the bankruptcy of its owner, RG Steel – was sold to a Chicago liquidator and St. Louis property developer for just $72 million. (The book value of the plant was more than $1 billion. It produced $1.49 billion in sales in 2011, but had been losing as much as $1 million a day, according to bankruptcy court papers.)
Nearly 3,000 employees and independent contractors were thrown out of work.
Recommended future uses of the Sparrows Point peninsula proposed by the Sparrows Point Partnership. (Baltimore County Development Office)
Hilco Global, the liquidator, and Environmental Liability Transfer, the redeveloper, jointly formed Sparrows Point LLC and purchased the plant from RG Steel in September 2012.
The group’s lawyer, Gerard Martin, disclosed to U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar on Tuesday that ELT had sold its share to Hilco, which in turn “has just agreed to sell a significant percentage” of the property to the local investment group.
Treated Sewage Dispute
The disclosure came as a result of a dispute between Baltimore City and ELT over the disposal of treated sewage from the city’s Back River Wastewater Treatment Plant. Under an agreement dated back to the 1940s, a large amount of treated water was piped to the steel plant rather than dumped in Back River.
Last year, ELT sought to terminate the agreement, which obligates them to take up to 40 million gallons a day of city wastewater from Back River. The city filed suit and the company agreed to let the city use the pipelines in return for a higher monthly fee.
The agreement was set to expire next month, which led to the filing of documents by Sparrows Point LLC asking for an extension of the pact to give the parties time “to close on property transfers and reach agreement on the solution to the existing water problems,” according to Martin.
_____________________________________________
Baltimore loses a billion dollars each year to its Baltimore Board of Estimates bid rigging that is so corrupt people have to take a shower after leaving a meeting. Everyone knows it is corrupt-----Federal investigations----government watchdogs and media expose all the fraud and corruption-----and yet, nothing happens to the pols or the behind doors 'corporate partners' because we have no Baltimore State's Attorney or Maryland Attorney General functioning in public justice on white collar crime and political corruption.
The article above was Baltimore County but it mirrors the deals made handing Port of Baltimore to HighStar and Johns Hopkins endowment. These deals happen every week draining tons of city revenue in pay-to-play-----racketeering----you name it. Baltimore has a $3 billion budget that could easily be $6 billion if only a Mayor of Baltimore and City Council would reform and rebuild the Baltimore Board of Estimates. A few Baltimore Charter changes expanding voice on this board----reforming what Baltimore Development Board appointments look like----moving to a social benefit policy stance and away from market-based profit stance will allow Baltimore to rebuild its local economies----rebuild the public institutions that give citizens a voice in public policy----and grow badly needed programs that would keep Baltimore from being third world.
Morgan Stanley of course still owes the city hundreds of millions of dollars in Wall Street fraud over a decade and is still busy with the frauds. All of these Wall Street bank branches moving into US International Economic Zones like Baltimore are working globally and bring no employment value......and lots of fraud, corruption, and corporate capture of Baltimore City Hall.
THIS STARTS BY BALTIMORE GOING SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC BY GETTING A VERY, VERY, VERY NEO-CONSERVATIVE JOHNS HOPKINS AND ITS WALL STREET BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT OUT OF BALTIMORE CITY HALL AND ALL NON-PROFITS.
Everyone knows that almost all Enterprise Zone requirements are ignored or data produced to make it look as though something is happening. The poverty jobs that do get created are filled with wage theft----workplace abuse....
ALL GIVING CORPORATIONS SUBSIDY AND TAX-FREE STATUS--------------so there is NO BENEFIT TO THE CITIZENS OF BALTIMORE.
City poised to grant job-creation extension to Morgan Stanley
Board of Estimates to give New York investment bank more time to deliver on commitment to create 1,500 jobs
August 20, 2013|By Yvonne Wenger, The Baltimore Sun
In return for the promise to bring another 650 jobs to Baltimore, city leaders are poised on Wednesday to give financial services giant Morgan Stanley more time to meet the terms of a $3.25 million loan forgiveness program.
The Board of Estimates vote comes amid public outcry over the city's plan to grant millions of dollars in aid to the $1.8 billion Harbor Point development, but some critics of that plan say the Morgan Stanley deal provides a proven return on investment.
"We made an agreement to them in good faith. We should allow the extension," said City Councilman Carl Stokes, a leading opponent of the unrelated Harbor Point plan that calls for further waterfront development.
The city and Morgan Stanley first agreed in 2003 that Baltimore would provide a series of low-interest loans in exchange for a commitment from the investment bank to create jobs. If the company created the number of jobs promised on the agreed-upon timeline, the city would forgive half of the loan debt. Baltimore was competing with other cities to attract the Morgan Stanley operations center.
The company began receiving $1.75 million in city loans at that time. A second agreement was signed in 2008 for another $1.5 million in loans, expanding the initial commitment of 600 jobs by late 2014 to 1,500 by late 2018.
From the Thames Street Wharf, Morgan Stanley now employs more than 850 people, most of whom were Maryland residents when they were hired, said Matt Burkhard, a company vice president. The Baltimore employees work in institutional securities processing, banking operations and other company functions.
Under the agreement, the company was to have had 900 employees on the payroll by last December. The requested extension would give Morgan Stanley until this December to hire the additional 50 workers.
The company is also seeking relief from its next-phase goal by reducing the number of promised positions from 1,200 by late 2015 to 1,000, said Jeffrey Pillas, chief financial officer of the Baltimore Development Corp., the city's quasi-public development agency. Pillas said that in granting the leeway, the city will reduce the next $500,000 loan installment to $167,000.
He said the company had reached — and exceeded — its job-creation commitments before now, and needs the extension to accommodate a hiring slowdown caused by the economy.
The company's commitment to create 1,500 jobs by the end of 2018 hasn't changed, Pillas said. To meet the final phase of the agreement, the last $500,000 loan installment would be increased to $833,000.
"They were reasonably on target, and we want the jobs," Pillas said. "It's a lot of jobs. It's 1,500 jobs, and 1,500 jobs doesn't come very frequently."
The Rev. Andrew Foster Connors, though, sees Morgan Stanley as a smaller-scale example than Harbor Point of the city's flawed economic development strategy. He is an activist with Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development, known as BUILD.
"BUILD has been saying this for a number of years: The city's whole economic development strategy is empty; it's bankrupt," he said. "These corporations take taxpayers' money under promises that they don't keep, and instead of holding them accountable, our leaders offer excuses on their behalf."
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young and Comptroller Joan M. Pratt all support giving Morgan Stanley flexibility, each said Tuesday.
The mayor called the deal prudent, said her spokesman, Travis Tazelaar. The city's loan modification reflects similar changes approved by the state, which provided a $4 million grant to Morgan Stanley through the Department of Business and Economic Development's Sunny Day Fund and a $1.5 million workforce grant.
Expansion costs for Morgan Stanley have been estimated at $42 million.
Stokes said Morgan Stanley has demonstrated good faith in fulfilling its promises to the city. He pointed out that if the company doesn't live up to its commitment, portions of the loan must be repaid in full.
The $107 million tax increment financing plan to pay for infrastructure, parks and other amenities at Harbor Point doesn't require job creation. The developer, however, agreed to voluntarily follow the city's new local hiring ordinance — pledging to hire 51 percent of new workers for the project from Baltimore. The City Council is scheduled to take a final vote on that plan next month.
"I actually see Morgan Stanley as a much better deal," Stokes said. "Both parties have kept up their end."
_______________________________________________
Hiding the real goal of community development in these temporary 'progressive posing' projects that should be REAL PUBLIC GREENHOUSE STRUCTURES that are permanent public assets for a community to build around takes all of the energy of the growing local food movement and uses it to hide the real development goals of bringing a huge global corporate campus to an area. Remember, International Economic Zones are hyper-concrete campuses -------total pollution------loads of immigrants from around the world-----AND NOTHING TO DO WITH BALTIMORE CITIZENS----THEIR WANTS AND NEEDS.
When Baltimore Board of Estimates makes THROWING MILLIONS at projects all know are simply designed to keep community residents busy until they are ready for the corporate campus-----we lose billions over a decade that would have created permanent public structures that would have spawned permanent local economies filled with public, private, and non-profit businesses.
These farms and the people behind them are probably real food advocates-----but when land is leased and not made public-------as almost all community garden space is in Baltimore----people do not connect to it as permanent. When citizens see the city handing multi-acre parcels to global investment firms citizens assume the same is coming to their communities and this kills community spirit.
Large urban farm planned for Sandtown-WinchesterBoard of Estimates approves deal Wednesday
October 24, 2012|By Luke Broadwater, The Baltimore SunBaltimore's spending panel on Wednesday approved a deal to turn 75 vacant lots in the Sandtown-Winchester neighborhood into a large urban farm.
In a five-year deal, the Board of Estimates approved a $100 yearly lease to a partnership of two organizations — Strength to Love II and Big City Farms — for use of 75 properties in the 1800 blocks of Lorman and Kavanaugh streets for a 1.5-acre farm.
"They're setting out to find farmers who are willing to work on city-owned vacant land," Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said. The company will bring fresh produce to the community for the next five years and help reduce food deserts, the mayor said.
Strength to Love II, which was founded in 1993, is a faith-based organization whose stated goal is to reduce high recidivism rates in Sandtown by providing jobs and training for ex-offenders. Big City Farms is an urban farming company that delivers its produce locally to grocery stores and restaurants.
__________________________________________
The entire Baltimore Development based on making downtown about TOURISM was declared a disaster even by Donald Schaefer and his staff decades ago------and yet, billions have been spent building the biggest convention center----then the need for hotels-----all of the revenue needed to market all this-----and now Baltimore citizens are subsidizing a Hilton ------handing huge corporate subsidy to the hotels-----and constant bankruptcy and vacancy because while sending all those billions in this worthless development------
JOHNS HOPKINS AND BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT WORKED AS HARD MAKING BALTIMORE CITIZENS POOR AND/OR UNEMPLOYED NOT ABLE TO SUPPORT THIS ECONOMY.
All of this was third world developing nation economy and they knew this. No doubt just waiting to install this International Economic Zone and Trans Pacific Trade Pact policies using an entire generations of Baltimore citizens to subsidize what they see being prosperous for the global rich in decades.
THAT'S WHAT ALL THIS DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT IS ABOUT-----THE GROUNDWORK FOR BALTIMORE BEING A HUB FOR THE GLOBAL RICH.
I heard a local ale house owner state that he could not stay in business because no one could afford to by his beer.
A city sparks development when it rebuilds its communities----creates local economies of small businesses and small manufacturing------pass laws that encourage strong wages and salaries-----and stop using public policy to soak all of citizens' disposable income to nothing that brings value to local economies.
Baltimore to sell land to developers for Hyatt-anchored project
Feb 25, 2009, 12:15pm EST Updated Feb 25, 2009, 12:15pm EST
Ryan Sharrow StaffBizspace Spotlight
The Baltimore City Board of Estimates approved a $4.5 million deal Wednesday to sell a block of land in downtown Baltimore to a team of developers planning to build a pair of Hyatt hotels.
A development team led by Mark Sapperstein, Benjamin Greenwald and Joseph Haskins plan to construct a 450,000-square-foot complex anchored by a Hyatt Place and Hyatt Summerfield Suites with a combined 300 hotel rooms.
Under the terms of the deal, the developers purchased properties at 26-36 Calvert St., 110 E. Lombard St. and 117 Water St. The redevelopment does not include the neighboring Brookshire Suites Hotel.
The $80 million “Hyatt at City Center” development also calls for a 300-space parking garage and commercial space.
The Baltimore Development Corp. estimates the development will create 450 construction jobs and 140 permanent jobs that should pump $60 million in new taxes to city coffers.
“Hyatt at City Center is another exciting private investment in the city of Baltimore, creating jobs and generating taxes in a key underutilized downtown site,” BDC President M.J. “Jay” Brodie said in a statement.
BDC began acquiring eight properties in the block in 2002 in hopes of sparking future redevelopment. The $4.5 million land sale price is equal to the appraised value of the site, BDC said.
_____________________________________________
US cities are crumbling and third world because from Clinton/Bush/Obama privatization and outsourcing combined with dismantling oversight and accountability had as a goal setting the stage for corporate looting of Federal, state, and local government coffers and they looted to the tune of tens of trillions of dollars----THIS IS WHY ARE US CITIES LOOK THIRD WORLD. Think how this will grow as the outsourcing now goes to global corporations ---we saw that already with the Defense Industry for example----and if International Economic Zone and Trans Pacific Trade Pact is left to be installed-----Americans will be colonial outposts seen as human capital to be soaked by taxation and enslaved in labor. THE FRAUD AND CORRUPTION GETS BIGGER AS GLOBAL CORPORATIONS COMPLETELY CONTROL OUR US CITIES. Please -----get rid of Wall Street global corporate neo-liberals and Bush/Hopkins neo-cons so we can rebuild our US cities, Rule of Law, Equal Protection, US Constitutional rights----and local domestic economies to create stable, healthy communities.
The local players who profited from all this corruption will be thrown under the bus as all this corruption will move to global players.
The growing threat of outsourcing fraud
Wednesday, October 06, 2010 Sourcing Focus.com
According to those close to the issue, a growing number of companies are at an increased risk of fraud due to outsourcing critical functions to third parties.
And the risk is greatest, it turns out, in the very locations to which a growing proportion of work is being outsourced - the world’s emerging markets.
“Fraud risks in emerging market countries are on the increase - but we’re not seeing a trend that suggests that businesses have recognised the danger,” says Neal Ysart, senior manager for forensic services at PricewaterhouseCoopers.
“What’s more”, he adds, “the tightening economic conditions of recent years mean that many of those businesses have also reduced the resources available to protect themselves from fraud.”
Yet identifying fraud - during audits, for instance - isn’t always easy, as managers at the outsourcing supplier can try to control information to which a forensic team has access.
“We had one client who failed to recognise that the internal audit team they sent to India was being fed with favourable information, and was being introduced to staff who had well-rehearsed answers ready and waiting,” he says. “This meant that they had a false degree of comfort that the risk of fraud was well controlled-and it came as a shock when problems started to surface.”
In short, he says, they had totally failed to recognise that their visit was being choreographed-and as a result missed the opportunity to identify problems at an early stage.
“The key problem,” says Michele Edwards, fraud analytics global market lead at Atlanta, USA-headquartered PRGX, a specialist procurement analytics firm, “is that outsourced operations, combined with a tough economy that puts businesses under pressure, has provided an opportunity that can prove too tempting to resist.”
“As companies move operations overseas, the risks of entering into a relationship with a corrupt third party - or a third party with corrupt employees - increases,” she notes. “Companies simply aren’t putting in place the controls and procedures that will identify and prevent fraudulent activity.”
As a result, businesses such as PricewaterhouseCoopers and PRGX are receiving a growing number of calls to carry out checks on vendors in places like China and India. Yet prevention-as always-is better than cure, and both Edwards and Ysart acknowledge that firms could do more to protect themselves when establishing outsourcing relationships in the first place.
“It really reinforces the importance of putting in place good governance within an outsourcing relationship at the start,” says Alistair Maughan, a partner at international law firm Morrison & Foerster. “To do otherwise is to ignore the possibility that fraud might occur - which is an unrealistic assumption.”
Yet according to PRGX’s Edwards, companies are still entering into outsourcing relationships without building into contracts the right to carry out audits - or even assessing suppliers’ own anti-fraud controls, or codes of employee conduct.
Indeed, “a supplier’s fraudulent employees pose a greater risk than many firms imagine-and one that they do relatively little to protect themselves from,” warns Mike Pierdes, a partner with law firm Pinsent Masons.
“Under English law and that of many other jurisdictions, unless it is expressly specified in the outsourcing agreement that the outsourcing supplier is responsible for the fraudulent activities of its employees, the supplier could potentially argue that any fraud was carried out by the employee outside his or her scope of employment, and that therefore there is no vicarious corporate responsibility,” he notes.
His advice? “Outsourcing agreements must specify that the supplier is responsible to the customer for the fraudulent activities of its employees-which isn’t the law, and must be negotiated,” he says. “The contract should also ensure that fraud is stated as an uncapped liability, and typically the customer should seek an indemnity from the supplier on this type of loss.”
RSS Feed
