Pity the poor Baltimore resident seeking help on the city's website with things like paying a water bill - www.baltimorecity.gov was well-known to be confusing, dysfunctional and outdated. Yet, somehow, three years after city officials contracted with a company with close ties to Mayor Brandon Scott to overhaul it, the project's costs ballooned and the site remains as wonky as ever. What started out as a $1 million contract with Fearless Solutions LLC has now soared to $5.6 million and still isn't fully operational. We started raising questions in 2024, noting the soaring cost and went on to raise iother issues, including the fact that the wife of the company's founder, a deputy mayor, had not disclosed the contract on her ethics forms. (Hours after The Brew made the disclosure, she amended her ethics report.) Consulting with web development experts, The Brew verified that despite all the extra spending, the new site would operate on a soon-to-expire content management system. We also found an irregular selection process that rejected an original low bidder, discovered that website redesigns in other cities were completed at a fraction of the price Baltimore was paying, and raised concerns about whether the site's reliance on an outdated Drupal system makes the city vulnerable to a ransomware attack like the one that crippled city government in 2019.
