Johnny Olszewski must answer difficult questions in connection with a case from 4 years ago

A few months ago, Johnny Olszewski Jr. seemed untouchable.

After becoming the youngest county executive in Baltimore County history, the Dundalk Democrat easily won re-election in 2022. He won his party’s primary for a rare open congressional seat earlier this year, then was hailed by President Joe Biden at a news conference after the Key Bridge collapsed. “Johnny, ooh, I like that,” Biden said with a smile, appreciating the Democratic rising star.

Olszewski, 41, is the clear favorite in the general election, running against a perennial candidate who has never held elected office.

Then, new stories emerged about a case from 4 years ago in which the county approved the payment of compensation to a retired county firefighter who is the brother of one of Olszewski’s employees. friends who is also his real estate agent.

That same friend, John Tirabassi, works for a trucking company from which the county bought $4 million worth of dump trucks in 2023 and 2024. The revelations, first reported by The Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Brew, prompted the Maryland Republican Party to call on Olszewski to resign as county executive and drop out of the 2nd District congressional race.

“Johnny Olszewski should not continue to serve as Baltimore County executive, much less continue to campaign for Congress,” Maryland Republican Party Chairwoman Nicole Beus Harris said in a statement Wednesday evening. “If he refuses to honorably conduct himself and recuse himself, we will work every day from now until November to expose his corruption to voters and defeat him at the polls.”

Olszewski is running against Republican Kim Klacik, a conservative talk show host endorsed by former President Donald Trump, who has called Olszewski an “illegal immigrant sympathizer.” She ran for Congress twice and lost; many don’t see her as a serious threat. The GOP’s call for his resignation doesn’t change that calculus, said Asa Leventhal, Olszewski’s campaign manager.

“The Maryland Republican Party continues to desperately clutch at straws to find any reason to turn voters away from candidates like Kim Klacik who support the extreme policies of Donald Trump, a convicted felon,” Leventhal said, adding a phrase the county executive often uses when he called the “Johnny O” administration the most transparent in county history.

The Baltimore County Council is made up of three Republicans and four Democrats. Councilman David Marks, an Upper Falls Republican who has served on the council since 2010, said GOP members generally work in a bipartisan manner with their Democratic colleagues and Olszewski.

“The chairwoman of the Maryland Republican Party hasn’t talked to me in years or asked for my opinion,” Marks said.

Maryland Republican Party Executive Director Adam Wood said he has not been in contact with any of the council members. Asked if he thought his call for Olszewski’s resignation would jeopardize the Republican council members’ working relationship with the county executive, Wood said, “I would say the secret payments would make their working relationship more difficult.”

Marks said voters have expressed concerns to him about paying compensation to the former firefighter, and he has his own concerns.

He said he would like county Inspector General Kelly Madigan to look into the matter and “publicly report her findings as soon as possible.” Contacted Thursday while on vacation, Madigan said she would neither confirm nor deny an investigation into the matter.

The Tirabassi Brothers

Olszewski’s latest criticism dates back to 2020, when Baltimore County firefighter Philip Tirabassi sought to transfer retirement benefits from his previous job as a city firefighter to increase his retirement benefits from the county. He had served with the city for 2.8 years, records show. County officials repeatedly denied his request, saying the transfer deadline had long since passed.

At some point, however, a lawyer who no longer works for the county approved what Olszewski told The Sun was an “unauthorized agreement” to transfer the credits. The county tried to back out of it, and Tirabassi threatened to sue. The county ultimately paid Philip Tirabassi $83,675 in settlement after lawyers for the pension system told officials that allowing Tirabassi to keep the credits would jeopardize the system’s tax-exempt status. County officials said they believed it would be cheaper to settle the case privately.

That might have been the case if not for Fred Homan, the former county administrator whom Olszewski asked to resign in 2018. Homan is suing the county for documents related to the Tirabassi case. County officials say the county has spent up to $318,000 so far fighting the release of those documents, and the board recently authorized the county to spend up to $200,000 more if necessary. Since a judge ordered the county to turn over the documents to Homan, details about the case are being released to The Sun and the Baltimore Brew.

The media recently reported that despite Olszewski’s claims that he “did not have a close personal relationship with Philip Tirabassi,” Olszewski and his wife used the services of Philip Tirabassi’s real estate firm, Advance Realty Direct, bought and sold three properties in recent years.

John Tirabassi, Philip’s brother, was Olszewski’s classmate at Sparrows Point High School and his real estate agent in Advance Realty Direct. John Tirabassi is also a regional sales representative for Peterbilt, a trucking company with a local office in Dundalk. The county spent $4.2 million in 2023 and 2024 to buy 16 dump trucks from Peterbilt, The Sun reported.

Integrity “speaks for itself”

Don Mohler, Olszewski’s predecessor and a longtime employee of the previous county government, said the decision regarding the dump trucks likely had nothing to do with Olszewski.

“Baltimore County executives have no involvement in the procurement process at all,” Mohler said, adding that he has known Olszewski since high school.

“His integrity speaks for itself,” he said. “And anyone who suggests that the executive director of Baltimore County would do something unethical is simply ignorant of the man.”

While Tirabassi’s disclosures have garnered the most public attention for Olszewski, they are not the only examples of a sometimes tumultuous tenure. The council did not have all the information when members approved the settlement with the former firefighter, originally filed under the name “Philip Dough,” instead of the more recognizable Tirabassi.

The council, led by Chairman Izzy Patoka, a Democrat, is also frustrated by what some see as a lack of transparency from the county executive this year. The council approved the purchase of an office building at 305 Washington St. in Towson for $5.8 million. The 30-year-old office building was valued at $4.1 million, according to state tax records. The building once belonged to Blue Ocean, a company where the county executive’s father, John Olszewski, was a lobbyist in 2020. Blue Ocean sold it to 305 Washington LLC in 2019; it’s unclear who owns that entity now.

Elder Olszewski did not return a call seeking comment. The Baltimore County Ethics Office told Elder Olszewski that the job was not an issue because he lobbied at the state level, not the county level.

The council approved the sale largely because the county said the building was ready to move in. Instead, the building needed nearly $7.5 million in repairs. Patoka criticized top county officials for giving the council a “need to know” basis for important expenses.

Madigan, the inspector general, said in a recent report that the county must notify the board about rehiring retirees, something it has consistently failed to do, violating its own rules.

Olszewski was out of town at the time and unavailable for comment, according to Leventhal and county staff.

His press releases and social media presence give no indication that anything is amiss with his plans to take over the seat vacated by Democrat Dutch Ruppersberger, who has served in Congress since 2003. The district includes parts of Baltimore and Carroll counties and a small part of Baltimore City.

This week, Olszewski announced the appointment of nine community members to lead efforts to engage the public in a multi-year dredging project on Hart-Miller Island. Olszewski, who often boasts of his working-class roots, took to Twitter to share his pride that the Towson Apple Store was the first to unionize, and also posted about receiving an endorsement from former congresswoman Gabby Giffords’ PAC, which focuses on reducing gun violence.

Wood said the Maryland GOP would not have called for Olszewski’s resignation if he had been as transparent as he promised. In trying to keep Tirabassi-related documents confidential, his administration ended up costing taxpayers far more than the original settlement.

“When someone spends that much money to not be transparent, that’s very disturbing,” Wood said. “Especially when it’s taxpayer money.”

On Friday afternoon, Homan, who filed the initial lawsuit that brought the Tirabassi case to light, declined to comment on whether he believed Olszewski should resign.

“That kind of decision is up to the public,” Homan said. “I did it because they broke the law and I wanted them to fix it.

Baltimore Banner reporters Saul Pink, Pamela Wood and Bria Overs contributed to this article.