Pity the poor Baltimore resident seeking help on the city's website with things like paying a water bill - www.baltimorecity.gov was known to be confusing, dysfunctional and outdated.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 about the project in January 2024, noting that the original contract had more than doubled in price in the space of a year. We also asked why 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. Continuing our scrutiny in 2025, Brew reported that its price had jumped to $3.9 million, then soared to $5.6 million as much of the original work product had to be discarded. 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. That's not all our deep dive reporting uncovered: We 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completed at a fraction of the price Baltimore was paying, and raised concerns about whether the site's reliance on an outdated Drupal system makes the city vulnerable to a ransomware attack like the one that crippled city government in 2019.
