A cartoon ad on the Maryland Transportation Authority’s Facebook page asks, “Driving in Maryland? Did you know that an E-ZPass can save you time and money?”

For Baltimore County government, the answer apparently is no.

Between January 2022 and March 2024, Baltimore County vehicles racked up $17,289 in fines, citations and late fees. They wouldn’t have had to pay as much if the county had just ordered the transponders that more than a million Maryland drivers already have, according to a report released Tuesday by county Inspector General Kelly Madigan.

According to data that Madigan’s staff analyzed from 23 agencies, about a third of the wasted money, or $5,039, was due to not having the passes in the vehicle. County employees also received 460 citations that included $25 in late fees, which cost $11,500. About 25 agencies didn’t pay those on time, which resulted in a $30 flag and a total of $750 for those charges.

The biggest offender, by far, was the Baltimore County Police Department, which racked up $6,182 of the charges. The bureaus of solid waste, utilities pipeline maintenance and the Fire Department were among the other significant offenders.

Reasons for the wasted money include improper management of the bill-paying division in various departments, improper placement of transponders on certain trucks preventing the readers from detecting them, and not replenishing the amounts on the E-ZPass accounts because county employees believed the procurement department would not allow it. Many drivers with E-ZPass set up automatic replenishments on their credit cards so they would never receive a bill or late fee.

“The overwhelming majority of the issues pertained to either a breakdown in some aspect of the management of the E-ZPass account within a given agency or the malfunctioning of a transponder or group of transponders that went unnoticed for a period of time,” Madigan wrote.

She recommended a mandatory policy where every employee has an E-ZPass, and a centralized payment and procurement operation that maintains the accounts and pays the bills on time. Additionally, the inspector general said the county’s department of vehicle management should just pay the video tolls they receive, instead of sending them to the individual agencies to pay.

The county vehicles that racked up the tolls are part of a small minority in Maryland that do not participate in the transponder economy. State transportation officials say 79% of the tolls collected at Maryland facilities come from the E-ZPass.

County Administrative Officer D’Andrea Walker responded that the county was not planning to centralize the fleet and its payment office, but would do “benchmarking for best practices” for fleet management. She did not provide details about how that would work.

Walker did say the county would upgrade all of its vehicles to include E-ZPasses and would update the E-ZPass violation policy within 90 days. She also committed to more frequent and comprehensive training for using procurement cards.