Audit highlights spending, hiring concerns in Baltimore City Register of Wills office

by Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters
July 30, 2025

The hiring of an employee in the Baltimore City Office of the Register of Wills has been referred to the State Ethics Commission for review, according to the Office of Legislative Audits.

The audit released Tuesday highlights several concerns related to hiring and spending on promotional materials, including a television program that never aired, as well as spending patterns that raised concerns the office split orders to avoid thresholds requiring competitive bidding and approval by the Office of the Comptroller.

“Our review did not identify any matters that warranted referral to the Office of the Attorney General – Criminal Division, but did identify matters that we referred to the State Ethics Commission as well as deficiencies with procedures and controls over procurement and human resource activities,” Legislative Auditor Brian S. Tanen wrote.

Register of Wills Belinda K. Conaway, in nearly identical written responses, disputed each allegation, calling each finding “unsubstantiated.” Each reply was no more than three sentences long.

Conaway did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But Tanen wrote that, “Due to the lack of specificity in the response, it is unclear what specific information the Office asserts is unsubstantiated and how it intends to address any decisions from the State Ethics Commission that result from the above noted referral.”

The review by Tanen’s office was triggered by an unnamed whistleblower who made allegations of “questionable procurement and payroll practices,” according to the report.

Conaway was first elected to the office — one previously held by her mother, Mary Conaway — in 2014. Her father, Frank Conaway Sr., served two terms in the House of Delegates and nearly two decades as Baltimore City Clerk of the Court. Belinda’s brother, Frank M. Conaway Jr., has served in the House of Delegates since 2007.

Every county and the city has a register of wills office responsible for overseeing matters of estates, and for the collection of inheritance taxes. Registers of wills are elected, and while the offices are associated with the court system, they are overseen by the state comptroller.

Questionable hiring and payroll practices

The auditors’ review covered the period from Jan. 1, 2017, to Oct. 24, 2024, as well as looking at payroll activity for two unnamed employees between November 2024 and March 2025.

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Tanen wrote that auditors were able to substantiate claims involving those two employees.

One, who had been hired in 2015, was paid a salary of $106,000 at the time of the audit, but was routinely not at work. They said they could not determine how often the employee came into the office.

“We attempted to locate the employee during several site visits, however the employee was not at the Office,” the audit said. “We subsequently requested sign-in sheets for the days in question and noted the employee was on leave on each of the days in question.”

A review of publicly available records showed the employee owned and operated a company that provided professional services “to the management employee who directly hired the employee,” auditors wrote. That company continued to provide services to the employee, and that relationship was not disclosed on annual financial disclosure forms, according to the report.

Auditors did not identify the employee, manager or company involved in the allegation.  Conaway’s office could not provide documentation to support hiring the employee.

Auditors referred the issue to the State Ethics Commission, noting that state law “prohibits an employee from having any other employment relationship that would impair the impartiality and independent judgment of the employee.” Additionally, the hiring of an employee who also has an “outside business relationship” with the hiring manager, coupled with a lack of documentation “could potentially violate prestige of office provisions in State Ethics law,” according to the report.

In another instance, auditors found Conaway’s office improperly paid an employee for holidays and leave totaling 205 hours. Auditors said the payments made in four pay periods between June 2022 and January 2023 occurred after the employee left the office and took a job in the state Department of Budget and Management.

Auditors said Conaway’s office should have asked for the money to be returned, or sent the matter to a state collections department, but it did neither.

Manicure sets and unaired infomercials

Auditors also substantiated allegations that Conaway’s office spent more than $1 million on questionable promotional materials, including payments of nearly $200,000 to create an “informational television show that was never aired.”

“The Office did not evaluate public interest in the show until after the funds were expended to produce it,” auditors wrote. “This is significant because subsequent evaluations by the Office disclosed that there was not sufficient interest to warrant broadcasting the show publicly, resulting in the waste of the amounts paid to produce the show.”

In another case, auditors found Conaway’s office bought 500 manicure sets for $1,300. The sets were embossed with the words “Where there’s a will, there’s a way” — a catchphrase used by Conaway’s office — but did not include any contact information for the office.

Auditors said Conaway “could not provide documentation that it had monitored the results of these efforts to ensure the desired outcomes were achieved and that they were effective uses of State funds.”

They said the spending was out of line compared to other Registers of Wills offices similar in size to Conaway’s. Each of those three offices said they spent nothing for public service announcements, and little on promotional items.

One unnamed office reported spending $2,500 per year on pens and calendars. A second said it spent $250 on pens. The third reported it did not purchase any promotional items.

Split purchases may have circumvented procurement law

Auditors also investigated allegations that Conaway’s office bought goods and services from vendors with connections to “office management.”

Those allegations could not be proven, but auditors did note concerns about $2.3 million in payments for goods and services, each valued at $5,000 or less — an amount that would have triggered a more formal procurement process and approvals from the comptroller’s office.

Of 1,749 purchases by Conaway’s office totaling $2.6 million between January 2017 and October 2024, auditors found that 98.6% were valued at $5,000 or less. A closer examination of a sample of 75 payments to 13 vendors, totaling $268,000, found that all but one could have been consolidated.

Auditors noted 23 payments to one vendor for media and production services in 2019 totaling more than $66,000 but each payment was less than $5,000. Some “payments appeared to have been artificially split to keep the procurements at or below $5,000,” the auditors wrote.

In one case, they said the office split an $8,300 purchase for promotional items in two, both made on the same day, each less than $5,000.

And those purchases add up. Auditors said 339 purchases to just 12 vendors totaled $1.2 million over the nearly seven-year review period.

“Office management personnel advised us that they could not remember how these vendors were selected and could not document any competitive procurement process for the goods and services,” auditors wrote. “We were advised that the management employee was heavily involved in the Office’s procurements, approved most of the invoices for payment, and signed most of the related checks.”

State regulations require vendor bids for purchases above $5,000 and prohibit artificially dividing procurements to circumvent the bidding process, the auditors wrote.

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