IG report shows city, contractor owed Baltimore business $247K in late payments

By Tolly Taylor

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    BALTIMORE, Maryland (WBAL) — A Baltimore City Inspector General Report Wednesday morning backed up what one small business owner has told 11 News Investigates since January.

The report documented late payments from the city, a city contractor receiving duplicate payments, and the small business owner stuck in the middle.

Badia Shephard, CEO of Taste of Home, was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars in overdue payments. She told 11 News Investigates the report is bittersweet.

Shephard said that, while it’s gratifying to see the inspector general’s report prove her right, it’s also bittersweet because the report comes months after her contracts with two of the city’s homeless shelters were terminated.

For months, Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Cumming has been gathering information about the way the city and its contractors treated Shephard.

Though Cumming’s report uses pseudonyms, Shephard confirmed the report was about her, the late payments she was owed and the city and contractor’s roles.

The report confirms three key details Shephard has told 11 News Investigates — that Shephard was owed $247,000 in late payments in December, that hospitality company Wankawala was partially responsible, and that the city was late making payments.

Mayor Brandon Scott has repeatedly denied the last point about the city’s late payments when 11 News Investigates asked him.

“And, I’ll say again, we’ve made our payments; we’ll continue to make our payments,” Scott said in July.

But the report contradicts that assertion.

“This report makes it clear that there were times when the city was not making their payments,” Cumming said.

The Mayor’s Office provided a statement to 11 News Investigates, saying:

“As we have said from the beginning, MOHS has worked diligently with the vendor to reconcile their account and address the impacts on their subcontractor. Under the new MOHS leadership, as stated in the OIG Report, payments to vendors and contractors have been prompt and punctual. MOHS will continue to ensure that vendors are paid in a timely fashion and that any concerns with vendors are addressed so that city resources are utilized in the right and fiscally responsible way.” Shephard said she was never paid on time.

But the report has other revelations as well, like the fact that the Mayor’s Office of Homeless Services mistakenly paid TIME Organization and Wankawala for meals that only TIME Organization helped deliver.

The city overpaid Wankawala by nearly $461,000.

Cumming said the city is still working to get the money back from Wankawala. Shephard wants to know why she wasn’t paid.

“Why wasn’t I paid our lump sum of $247,000 plus?” she said.

The city stopped using Wankawala as a contractor after the contract term ended last spring, according to the report.

“This is a major impact on small businesses,” Cumming said. “I feel for her because she was doing a real service to the homeless and giving them the food, and I would hope that the city could do better in the future.”

Three months after her contract was terminated, Shephard is still owed nearly $11,000.

In response to the report, the executive director of MOHS wrote that the city agency has made three “system improvements” to prevent the overpayment to Wankawala from happening again.

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