Idiots! Why did they even invest in them?

Great job, County Council. Way to forfeit the potential to recover money. You guys are over your head.

Someone will step up, someone will!

MORE publicity regarding this issue is needed....hard to find good honest attorneys these days..

It could be worse - we could be Jefferson County Alabama where officials were convicted on various bribery charges for their roles in the awarding of sewer system bond contracts.

Here it was just greed to help the pension fund and apparently a bunch of people who didn't understand that you could lose a lot of money in these types of transactions.

Baltimore County was far from alone in making bad investment decisions. Hopefully everyone learned a very painful lesson. I would think recapturing any monies at this point is wishful thinking. But, if the opportunity presents itself for another firm to do the the work on a commission only basis I would hope they'd try. The upside is good with no downside, as long as it's a "commission" only contract. Please don't chase good money after bad.

There is another side to this story, as reported originally by Bryan Sears, if I am not mistaken. There is evidence that the initial investment was made with general fund money, and that it was transferred to the pension fund after the losses. That raises even bigger questions about how this matter was handled in the beginning! I hope people will not lose focus on that, and that Bryan will pursue those allegations further.

it is absurd that the law firm backed out because of publicity...lawyers feed off of publicity! the suit was not pursued for 1 reason...the investment was made 5years ago, and the claim is beyond the 3 year statute of limitations...lucky for this administration that no one reads the news, or attends budget presentations, apparently...this is all nonsense and more cover up by this administration.....who in the world would believe that a lawyer would not pursue a multi-million dollar claim because a local blog, the Patch, reported on some secret meeting...they keep getting away with this stuff no one is asking the hard questions and demanding answers...

Umm...the story isn't the suit drop. Homan guaranteed that with his statement that Merrill had disclosed that the investment was rated prime by two independent agencies as required. That the reveal is what made the litigators surrender.

The bigger issue here is government versus the market. Homan has just begun to be appropriately publicly humiliated for falsely accusing a well established industry player who provides a number of well paying local jobs of fraud. But now is the time to stop playing small time politics and reveal the truth.

Every financial rep who approaches a municipality carries a Series 7 license which the SEC makes public to avoid these issues. Homan needs to produce the name of the rep he believes to have committed the fraud.

If he fails to do so, or decline to resign, we should assume the entire Kamenetz administration is anti business and complicit in false accusations of our friends and neighbors who work in private industry.

When local pols and their staff assail the innocent working professionals for political expediency the system requires federal intervention.

Please watch or read ,"To Big to Fail", I think you'll find it interesting and informative. You insist everything this and the past administration involves itself with is a conspiracy to dupe the Baltimore County citizen. I for one am getting increasingly tired or your constant anti rhetoric. It has been reported in other comments that you really are a former employee with an axe to grind, it's showing. No administration is always right or wrong, that's the nature of the beast, but everything isn't cloak and dagger as you make it out to be. I for one am getting bored with your comments that never see the total picture. Once just once please say something positive about the administration. There has to be something they have done that you approve.

Please............this is probable just another County master plan to help justify the increases for employee's contribution to retirement and health care! The county investors screwed up and the county employee pay the price.......hell they (the Homan investors) will probably get a raise or some new triple dipping loophole will be exposed!

Just send a request to Obama for a Bailout. They're still printing funny money with no real value. 21M, that's chicken feed compared to say, GM, etc, etc !!!

I have a simple question for the County officials and it is one that should be easy to figure out. Why, when there are $21,000,000.00 involved, did it take so long to file anything in court and therefore go past the statute of limitations of 3 years? Is it so hard to produce a filing before a court? It seems to me that it would have been worth it to hire an attorney as a Baltimore COunty employee to handle these issues. I think that Baltimore City has a City Solicitor who handles non-criminal filings such as this. Does Baltimore County have a similar legal position/office? If not, then why not?

I understand that in the world of investing that no matter what one invests in, loss is possible as is gain. But someone needs to spread out these investments into a broad spectrum of instruments so that is one part of the portfolio suffers loss, then a total loss isn't experienced.

Too bad about the $21 MM, would have bought a lot of A/C for schools.

What a disgrace. Incompetence abounds. And for this we refer to them as the "authorities"??? A good starting question would be "who Authorized what, why and when?" A monkey randomly picking stocks could have done better than this.

For a brief moment in time last year, I thought the County had done us a favor by reassessing our property values to bring them more in line with the currently depressed housing market. However, they quickly increased the percentage of taxation being charged, resulting in an actual increase in property taxes; perhaps this is where that $21M deficit will come from? They are totally out of touch with economic realities. We're forever being expected to "do more, with less", yet how about them?

A simple test of their business acumen would be for the County to publish a list of contracts which have been favorably renegotiated in the past five years. I guarantee you it would be a very short one, despite their enormous buying power. For starters, those expensive and much-hated speed trap cameras are certainly not going to appear on such a list...

For years the Baltimore County Pension program was invested in only very secure stocks...never made a killing in the market, but consistantly, was safely invested. Shame on those responsible for this fiasco. Myself and many others paid into our pensions with complete trust, never thinking for a moment that our money would be spent so poorly.

The money is gone. The Council and Executive are gone. What we have left is a bitter Homan trying to blame Sears. "were less than pleased with the disclosure of public information regarding the case over the last week or so. Maybe publicity is a better word than public information."
Homan is denying public information was at fault. It's the publicity. In otherwords, the facts are not at fault, it's the media to blame for reporting them.publicity. What transparent attempt at parsing words. Kill the messenger.

Sooooo. Don is never wrong, Fred is never wrong. They have a real habit of passing the blame. Now Sears is at fault?? What a laugh!!! He is a REPORTER!!! That's what he does, that's what he is supposed to do.

Idiots.

The County Administration is out of it on this issue. Fred messed up big time now let him admit his wrongdoing and how it happened. (He won't). The 'circus' is in town, stay tuned.

In the picture Fred Homan is telling Don Mohler "Keep saying 'no comment!' when asked about this or anything else county related".

I'm waiting for Meg O'Hare to respond. Meg, would you classify the latest comment as "nasty"? Will you be quick to respond, condemn or will you sit silent and let it go.I hope your blog is what you really believe and if it is you will comment. Please, "crooks"? Buck are you really claiming that either of those 2 benefited personally by the horrible investment. Please try and refrain from such vitriolic comments, it has no place and serves no purpose. And just what exactly is the look of a crook. Is it the Bernie Madoff look, is it the Richard Nixon look, seriously? If you have the ability to distinguish crooks please contact Chief Johnson I'm certain there's a role for you in the police department. Please don't turn this forum into talk radio.