On May 29, Judge Dennis Robinson of the Circuit Court for Baltimore County issued a court order unsealing the case record in the lawsuit filed in April 2024 by Baltimore County against Patrick H. Murray, who was chief of staff for former County Executive Johnny Olszewski before resigning in September 2022.

The ostensible purpose of the case was to seek a judgment declaring that the report of an investigation into a 2021 breakfast meeting between Murray and former Baltimore County Inspector General Kelly Madigan that Madigan wanted to make public was not a “personnel record” protected from disclosure by the Maryland Public Information Act (PIA) as contended by Murray’s lawyer.

The investigation at issue was carried out on behalf of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) by lawyers from the law firm Saul Ewing.

The case was filed at the insistence of Madigan, who believed that the breakfast meeting was part of a broader effort by the Olszewski administration to undermine her investigation into favored treatment of a building permit application by developer David Cordish that proved highly embarrassing.

The case was settled in June 2025. The terms of the settlement agreement included the county paying $100,000 to Murray for his legal fees and extending an order permanently sealing the court record to include records in the county’s custody related to the case, which until vacated meant that the Saul Ewing report and the facts attendant to it could never be made public.

Snatching Defeat

Information revealed as a result of the unsealing of the case record raises a troubling possibility, one that I would not have seriously considered before I began paying close attention to the operation of Baltimore County government.

It looks to me like the administration of County Executive Kathy Klausmeier deliberately snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by pulling the plug on the lawsuit as it was nearing a conclusion.

The county clearly had the upper hand in the case, at least as to the law.

It appears that the only person interested in winning the case was Madigan, and that the administration’s overriding objective was making sure that as much information as possible remained hidden from public view.

The facts that have emerged are unflattering not only to Olszewski, but also to current county officials who played a role in the sequence of events that displayed what Murray described as “incredible stubbornness and stupidity on the part of county officials.”

Law was on County’s Side

I have previously described that, as argued by the county, the Saul Ewing report was an investigatory record subject to release at the discretion of the county, not a “personnel record” protected from disclosure by the PIA.

The Maryland Supreme Court has held that personnel records are documents “that directly pertain to employment and an employee’s ability to perform a job” and “[relate] to hiring, discipline, promotion, dismissal or any other matter involving an employee’s status.” The Maryland Appellate Court held that a record generated by an agency lacking supervisory authority over an employee generally does not qualify as a “personnel record.”

The administration’s overriding objective was making sure that as much information as possible remained hidden from public view.

The Saul Ewing report had no bearing on Murray’s “status as an employee” because that status had ended before the investigation began. Even if he had been an employee at the time of the investigation, neither Saul Ewing nor the IG herself had supervisory authority over Murray – only Olszewski did.

Any personnel record generated on Murray while he was employed remains protected from disclosure. A record of an investigation into his actions initiated after his employment ended, however, especially one prepared by an agency that had no supervisory authority over him while he was employed, was an investigatory record under the PIA that the county had the prerogative to disclose.

The agreement settling the case in June 2025 represented complete capitulation by the county.

It required the county to pay Murray $100,000, who alleged in a counterclaim that the proposed release of the report constituted retaliation for questioning the “breadth” of the OIG’s authority and violated his rights to due process.

It kept the court record under seal and also called for the court to separately issue a highly unusual order “directing the County to deny requests [made pursuant to the PIA] for records related to this matter.” Judge Truffer issued that order in July 2025.

Keeping it Quiet

The county’s obsession with secrecy in the matter began with the events preceding the litigation and continued through the settlement.

In February 2023, County Attorney James R. Benjamin Jr. engaged the services of Saul Ewing to investigate Murray’s actions for $24,998, $2 less than the amount at which approval by the county council would have been required.

Council members claimed that, when they approved a multi-year contract with the law firm Karpinski, Cornbrooks & Karp to provide legal services to the OIG, an item added at the last minute to the agenda of a council meeting, they were not informed by the Olszewski administration that those services included filing a lawsuit on behalf of the county against Murray.

Next, the county sought a court order sealing the record of the Murray case as soon as it was filed in April 2024 to “maintain the confidentiality” of Murray’s identity and employment records, despite the claim by Murray’s attorney that his client never sought such protection.

Finally in June 2025, the county agreed to the legally questionable order directing it to deny inspection under the PIA of public records “related to” the case in the county’s custody, presumably including documents that were not part of the case record itself.

Coming Undone

The secrecy began to unravel in August 2025 when The Baltimore Banner reported that it learned from several council members that $100,000 had secretly been paid to settle a lawsuit with an unnamed former employee.

The following month, retired County Administrative Officer Fred Homan told the council that the employee was Patrick Murray, which Murray confirmed, and public criticism intensified with the knowledge that the former employee was a high-ranking official in the Olszewski administration.

When the council took no action to determine the reason for the lawsuit and settlement, Homan filed his own legal action to have the records unsealed.

Although his first effort was unsuccessful, his fortunes changed after he retained a lawyer and Judge Robinson was assigned to the case.

The county’s resolve to preserve the secrecy buckled when Judge Robinson issued an order in April instructing the parties to submit memoranda specifically addressing the secrecy in light of the general rule that court records shall be open unless a “specific legal basis” requires closure. The handwriting was on the wall.

Shortly thereafter, the county dropped its opposition to unsealing the records, and on May 29, Judge Robinson vacated Judge Truffer’s prior orders, including his July 2025 order barring disclosure of public records related to the case in the county’s custody.

Olszewski’s Role?

Last month, Olszewski acknowledged to The Baltimore Sun that he supported the controversial breakfast meeting arranged by Murray, explaining through a spokesperson that “senior staff, including the then-County Executive, agreed that a conversation might be helpful in exploring ways to ensure employees – new to the process – could comfortably and fully participate in investigations without feeling intimidated.”

Several council members have since questioned why Olszewski’s role in the meeting was not disclosed sooner.

The answer to that question is easy:

Olszewski was trying to get out ahead of the information now available from the unsealed case record that he was intimately involved in the March 2021 meeting. The problem for him is that his statement just made matters worse.

Olszewski is now trying to get out ahead of information that he was intimately involved in Murray’s controversial meeting with Madigan.

Murray claimed in the case that “senior county officials directed him” to meet with Madigan “because they were concerned about her tactics on County employees’ execution of their duties.”

As it happens, the supposed concern about her “tactics” coincided with the initiation of the Cordish investigation by the OIG.

As chief of staff, Murray answered directly to Olszewski. Olszewski was the only “senior County official” who could direct him to do anything.

My guess is that Olszewski told Murray to meet with Madigan to try to rein her in, just like I believe that in April 2021 it was Olszewski who told Murray to instruct Madigan that all requests for records from the OIG were to run through his office.

A Glaring Omission

It also is noteworthy that, while Murray claimed in his lawsuit that he told the Saul Ewing lawyer investigating his conduct about receiving direction from senior officials, that fact never made it into Saul Ewing’s final report.

How could it not be relevant to an investigation into the propriety of a former employee’s actions that the employee was acting on orders from his boss?

I suspect that the discrepancy is just one of many reasons that Olszewski and county officials loyal to him never wanted this sorry mess exposed to public scrutiny.

If you add that discrepancy to the fact that, against Madigan’s wishes, the scope of Saul Ewing’s investigation was narrowed to the March 2021 breakfast meeting, it is easy to understand why Madigan suspected that efforts by Olszewski to undermine the Cordish investigation went far beyond one meeting.

The credibility-damaging back and forth within county government over the scope of the Saul Ewing investigation and the contents of the report has been reported in the media, including in detail by The Brew.

What at first blush appears to be an outright tactical blunder that hasn’t received any attention was the decision by the county to institute the suit seeking a declaratory judgment.

The standard approach would have been for the county to give Murray, as the individual opposing release of the report, notice of the pending release so that he had a reasonable opportunity to initiate legal action to try to prevent the release if he chose to do so.

Among other advantages, that would have placed the onus on Murray to decide whether or not to seek an order sealing the record.

Then again, maybe the county did not want to leave that decision up to Murray.

Checks and Balances Don’t Work

According to a county spokesperson, Klausmeier decided to settle the case “to avoid the additional costs and uncertainty associated with continued litigation.” Lawyers from Karpinski, Cornbrooks & Karp already had been paid a reported $80,000 to try the case on behalf of the county.

Klausmeier’s concern about incurring “additional costs” was the product of another questionable decision. County Attorney James Benjamin told me that he agreed with Madigan that the Saul Ewing report was not a personnel record.

So, what was the conflict of interest justifying the use of outside counsel for what was essentially a routine PIA case well within the expertise of a large county law office?

Save for the willingness of Fred Homan, a private citizen, to spend his own money to pursue legal action, this scheme would have succeeded.

An argument can be made that spending $25,000 to investigate the conduct of a former employee wasn’t the best use of county money.

No argument can be made, however, that pulling the plug on a case that the county should have won after paying a reported $80,000 to private lawyers to litigate it for over a year was anything other than a complete waste of money. Or that the single-minded determination by the Olszewski administration and the administration of his hand-picked successor to hide the matter from the public isn’t highly suspicious.

In my opinion, the lawsuit against Murray was an expensive charade intended to give the impression of being concerned about Madigan’s complaints of interference in the Cordish investigation without actually accomplishing anything – and by disclosing as little information as possible to county residents along the way.

The most disturbing thing is that, but for the willingness of Fred Homan, a private citizen, to spend his own money to pursue legal action (and an enlightened judge), the scheme would have succeeded.

The checks and balances and guardrails within the Baltimore County government that exist to prevent this kind of travesty don’t work.

They haven’t worked for a long time, and no current elected official in the county appears to care.

• David A. Plymyer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney after 31 years in the county law office. He can be reached at dplymyer@comcast.net and Twitter @dplymyer.