If I understand the deed history here, this land was part of a parcel bought by a church in 1993. The church then split the parcel in two and put an agricultural easement on one of the new parcels in exchange for being able to build on the other parcel. Both parcels were bought by the Soccer Association of Columbia in 2002. They then put soccer fields on the buildable parcel and, in 2004, sold off the parcel with the easement, which is the one we're looking at here. They still own the parcel with the soccer fields; it's the Lucido Fields at Covenant Park.

I'm not sure why SAC bought both parcels when they only needed the one, but perhaps it was part of a deal with the church. "We don't want to sell both parts separately, so if you want the one, you have to take both and then figure out what to do with the other yourself," perhaps.

Also, as a side note, the church still owns a chunk of the buildable parcel, but I can't tell how the parcel's ownership has been transferred. It was definitely sold to SAC, so probably at some point SAC subdivided the parcel further and sold a chunk back to the church. I can't find the deeds for that, though, and I don't feel like trawling through the deed indexes to try and find anything relevant.

The church isn't an owner. The current owners are Robert and Lisa Berg. The property description is "PAR B 62.971 A, 4580 CENTENNIAL LN, COVEN BAP CHUR OF W COLU", because it was originally created in the 1990s (I think) when land owned by a church was divided into two parcels, this one being the ~63 acre parcel "B". The lot has been sold several times since then; the current and previous owners appear to have been private individuals.

The current version of the report on the auditor's website says the county solicitor said section 213 gave them authority for "an audit or examination of the HCLS’ records that contain information that is relevant to the allegations." The allegation was that the person serving as CEO of HCLS and president of the Board of Tustees was using library funds—which primarily come from county taxpayers—for personal purposes.

The report appears to have been revised since its original release. The current report just says the library didn't cooperate with the investigation. The original report, in addition to the whole stakeout thing (which I'm not defending), said the auditor tried to get access to library records and employees but was rebuffed by the library, with a few more details than the current revision. That's what really struck me when reading the report. According to the auditor, the county's lawyers thought this was reasonable, the county council gave a directive to investigate, and the library just refused to cooperate, at least to the degree the auditor felt was necessary to conduct the investigation. (And then the report started bringing up people's apparent race and clothing. I think I see what they meant, but it's not a great look. I'm going to hazard a guess that no Black people reviewed the report before it was published.)

So some lawyers thought some investigation of the library by the county was legal. The details and methods of access to records and employees might need to go to court to be resolved, but there do seem to be legal arguments to be made in the county's favor. (I don't know what those specific arguments are, since the county solicitor's exact words aren't part of the public record.) If the stakeout was, as some people seem to be characterizing it, the auditor hiding in the bushes at the library, waiting for someone to do something nefarious, that's probably not covered by whatever the solicitor wrote. On the other hand, if the stakeout was, "I drove past the library and there was definitely an event that seemed to be closed to the public," that might be more supportable.

It does seem that the library regards itself as above any oversight by the county. The county auditor's report, however, says the county's Office of Law determined the county did have oversight authority. (And then the County Council directed the auditor to investigate, but personally I'd give more weight to the legal department's opinion than the political officeholders'.)

The auditor's report didn't elaborate on the Office of Law's ruling, so I can't evaluate it myself, but there is at least some legal opinion supporting the county's position. I suppose if they want to pursue this further, it'll have to involve the courts making a determination.

"We investigated ourselves and determined that we didn't do anything wrong."

The whole thing seems weird and now outsized. The library gets most of its funds from the county but flat out refused to cooperate with the audit. They basically said, "Just trust us; we're fine." That's … not great accountability for county funds.

But the auditor's report had weird wording around people's race. I think, reading it charitably, the auditor merely meant to draw the causal connections: "The library was closed to the public for a private event (at a time it would normally have been open); the event was for a historically-Black sorority whose members wear white dresses to formal events; there were Black women in white dresses going in; therefore the only people who entered the library were members of the private organization." But they didn't explicitly mention about half of that, so they came off as bringing up race out of nowhere. On top of that, from my perspective the issue is with the library's use of county resources, not the particular organization holding the event, so a lot of the details about the sorority don't really seem relevant.

The auditor really needs to do a better job of approaching race, especially in a county as diverse as Howard. But the library's behavior still seems off to me.