Baltimore County wasted $17K on highway tolls, transactions according to Inspector General report
BALTIMORE -- Baltimore County wasted about $17,289 on highway tolls between 2022 and 2024, according to a report released by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) Tuesday.
The investigative report looked at tolls and transactions between January 1, 2022, and March 31, 2024, and found the unnecessary spending was due to a breakdown in the management of the county's E-ZPass program.
According to the report, county agencies are not taking advantage of discounted toll rates and had to pay citations after not paying video tolls on time. The report also found the county had to pay additional fees for flags put on vehicle registrations when citations were not paid.
During her investigation, Baltimore County Inspector General Kelly Madigan discovered that many county agencies got E-ZPass for their vehicles on their own to save money on tolls.
Many of the charges occurred when an agency failed to resolve issues related to their E-ZPass accounts in a timely manner, the report said.
The OIG report recommends that the county transition to a centralized E-ZPass system managed under the Office of Budget and Finance's Vehicle and Operations Maintenance (VOM) division.
Under the system, all vehicles would be required to have an E-ZPass transponder before being leased to a county agency. Officials with the VOM division would be responsible for managing the E-ZPass accounts for all county vehicles, the report said.
In the report, Inspector General Madigan directs the VOM division to ask if the county could qualify for an E-ZPass business account which could offer benefits including discounts on tolls.