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A reader’s guide to the agenda, the county’s closed-session problem, and what tomorrow’s special meeting could reveal about the ICE warehouse fight.

Why this meeting matters
A “special meeting” of the Board of County Commissioners is a focused session called outside the regular schedule. Tomorrow’s meeting has three open items, a closed session, and a packet that was revised on short notice. Two of the three items raise serious questions about how Washington County contracts for infrastructure work, and the closed session, as published, appears to mis-cite the Open Meetings Act in ways the statute itself addresses directly.

This guide walks through each item in plain language, then explains what’s wrong with the way the closed session is framed and what can be done if a violation occurs.

Item 1: A consulting contract that raises ethics concerns
The Commissioners are being asked to approve a consulting contract with GDMS, LLC, a small company whose principal is Gregory B. Murray.

Murray’s history matters here:
-He was Washington County’s Administrator until October 2017, when he was forced out under contested circumstances.

-His wife, Debra Murray, was fired at the same time over an unauthorized $250,000 loan tied to a county landfill project.

-He later became City Manager in Punta Gorda, Florida, and resigned in November 2024 after a publicly reported incident at a bar and a contested severance vote.

-Debra Murray has been CFO of Ellsworth Electric since 2018.

-Ellsworth Electric was founded by Commissioner John F. Barr, who remains chairman of the board.

So the company being awarded the contract is run by a former County Administrator whose spouse works for a business controlled by the Commissioner presiding over tomorrow’s meeting.

The contract itself includes:
-A one-sided attorneys’ fees clause requiring the County to pay GDMS legal costs in disputes.

-A broad scope allowing the County Administrator to assign additional work without formally amending the contract.

The scope overlaps with issues central to the federal lawsuit Maryland v. Noem, including sewer capacity, infrastructure readiness, and growth impacts connected to the proposed ICE detention warehouse in Williamsport.

For months, people across Washington County have been asking why so many major decisions connected to the proposed ICE detention warehouse seem to happen behind closed doors. Between reports of non-disclosure agreements, private discussions, canceled meetings, sealed negotiations, and ongoing litigation, public trust around this project has steadily eroded. Now another confidentiality agreement has surfaced, this time tied directly to sewer infrastructure, utility planning, and future county development.

Buried inside the Washington County Board of County Commissioners agenda packet for a May 21 special meeting is a consulting contract between Washington County government and GDMS, LLC, a private consulting company managed by former longtime Washington County Administrator Gregory B. Murray. Murray is not some random outside consultant being brought in from another state. Before becoming County Administrator, he also served as director of the County’s Water Quality Department, which makes his reappearance especially notable given that sewer and wastewater capacity have become some of the biggest unresolved issues surrounding the proposed ICE detention facility near Williamsport.

The contract gives GDMS broad authority to provide consulting and support services related to public utility adequacy, including sewer infrastructure, future growth projections, infrastructure readiness, regional service capacity, and identifying “critical areas of immediate need.” The agreement is written broadly enough that the work could potentially touch almost any major infrastructure issue the County wants reviewed. The consultant is also authorized to evaluate water and sewer deficiencies, analyze future growth impacts, coordinate with regional service providers, and even perform “other tasks not identified” if directed by the County.

What immediately caught our attention, however, was the confidentiality language embedded in the agreement. Under a section titled “Confidentiality,” the contract states that the consultant and its representatives may not “divulge, disclose, or communicate in any manner” any proprietary County information. The agreement further states that all such information must be treated as “strictly confidential,” and those confidentiality obligations continue even after the contract ends.

Under ordinary circumstances, that language might not stand out much. Governments use confidentiality clauses in consulting contracts all the time. But these are not ordinary circumstances. The proposed ICE warehouse has already triggered lawsuits from Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, protests, environmental disputes, public records fights, and growing concerns about secrecy surrounding the project. One of the central questions in the legal battle has been whether existing infrastructure can safely support a large-scale detention facility and the significant wastewater demands it could generate. Sewer and wastewater capacity have become some of the most politically sensitive aspects of the entire controversy.

That is why this contract raises so many questions. Washington County is now quietly approving a confidential consulting arrangement focused specifically on water, sewer, and infrastructure issues while those exact same issues remain at the center of the ICE warehouse fight. The agreement also allows the consultant access to County employees and County data, permits the use of subcontractors with “specific subject matter expertise,” and states that all work produced under the contract becomes the “exclusive property” of Washington County government.

Miles Taylor, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security turned fierce anti-Trump critic, announced the rollout of a new app designed to alert people about plans to open immigration detention facilities in an appearance on “The Rachel Maddow Show” in late April.

Users who signed up for the app then received email messages and phone texts stating that their emails, phone numbers, locations and other information had been “forwarded to the authorities,” including the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations and ICE, according to Hagerstown Rapid Response, a Maryland-based group organizing against a proposed ICE detention facility 75 miles outside of Washington, DC.

The apparent breach was highlighted in a press release and blog post issued by Hagerstown Rapid Response and Washington County Indivisible claiming that “nearly 18,000” users were affected. The anti-ICE groups cited a post by the pro-Trump Data Republican X account indicating that 17,662 people signed up for the app.

A fiery resistance has sprung up in a conservative Maryland county after the Trump administration quietly bought a warehouse to hold detainees. They have a lot of determination — and some drones.

People volunteered to research city and county codes, pull water and sewer documents and file public record requests. An Uber driver took routes near the warehouse to keep tabs on activity there. The group even attracted two drone operators to do surveillance from afar. In a city where the only regular protests used to take place outside the downtown abortion clinic, warehouse opponents were now descending on county board meetings while Rage Against the Machine blared outside.

The Western Maryland warehouse is part of a broader Trump administration plan to convert several industrial spaces around the country into detention centers. The purchases have drawn bipartisan pushback in many communities, with residents worried about effects on the local environment, infrastructure and tax base. But nowhere has the resistance been so fierce and organized as in Hagerstown and surrounding Washington County.

The most energized warehouse opponents have no background in activism or politics — just a shared sense of dread about where the country seems to be headed and how their community figures into the administration’s plans. Dattilio grew up in Hagerstown, earned a degree in computer science from the University of Maryland, and returned to marry his high school girlfriend. He has four children between the ages of 4 and 10. His family has been in the area for 120 years.

He can’t shake the idea of Hagerstown becoming shorthand for “concentration camp.”

A newly obtained DHS email is shedding new light on the proposed ICE facility in Washington County, Maryland, and the language inside it directly contradicts months of softer public messaging surrounding the project.

While the subject line of the email refers to the site as the “ICE Baltimore Processing Facility,” DHS officials internally describe it as the “proposed ICE detention center at 10900 Hopewell Road in Hagerstown, Maryland.”

That distinction matters because officials have repeatedly relied on terms like “processing facility” when discussing the project publicly, even as residents and advocates warned the warehouse was being developed into a large-scale detention operation.

The email also reveals that the project is still facing unresolved tribal consultation issues under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. According to DHS, one tribe requested additional information related to ground disturbance impacts, and ICE is now awaiting final design details from its contractor before continuing consultation.

At the same time, DHS says ICE has now determined the project requires a formal Environmental Assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act due to the “scope of potential impacts associated with the proposed undertaking.”

That means the federal government is acknowledging the project may carry significant environmental and community impacts requiring deeper review and future public engagement.