Emergency procurements not only skirt around Board of Estimates approval. They delay and sometimes hide public disclosure of how taxpayer money is used. Here are the two latest examples. UPDATED

County Executive Kathy Klausmeier approved the $100,000 settlement with Patrick Murray in a case that she and her predecessor, Johnny Olszewski, never wanted to win. [OP-ED]

There was no odor, a Maryland Department of the Environment inspector said, speculating that the source may be a flocculant or coagulant used for treatment of sediment-laden water on construction sites.

“It’s not that the job has become harder. It is that it has become impossible,” the lawyer representing the watchdog agency tells Judge Pamela White.