personnel

Randy Brown deputy executive secretary of the Maryland Transportation Authority (MdTA) is retiring at the end of May, and will be replaced as #2 to executive secretary Harold Bartlett by Deborah Sharpless, currently chief financial officer of the Maryland toll agency. Brown has been with the state for 34 years - 22 years at the State Highway Administration, then 12 years at the toll authority.

BancPass the transaction processing company based in Austin Texas says Glenn Deitiker is their new president and chief technology officer. He comes from Telvent where he was head of the toll division. Back in 2007 Caseta Technologies, a company he had founded in 1994 had been acquired by Telvent and for a while he operated as head of a branch of Telvent known as Telvant Caseta.

Gerry Carrigan who has been acting executive-director (ED) of the North Texas Tollway Authority for the past six months has been confirmed as full ED by the board of directors. The vote was unanimous.

Thomas 'Tom' Kramek is the new General Manager at TRMI, a position which has been vacant ever since Charlie Mitchell left for ACS several years ago. Kramek, also a VP of Engineering at the Accord NY system integration firm now seems to be the senior ranking officer below Robert and Steven Rosakranse, the president and executive VP father and son who are the major shareholders and executives of this 40 plus ('40 odd' could be misunderstood) employee company.

Rick Nelson a 23 year veteran of operations at Florida's Turnpike has been suddenly laid off. Last week he got words to the effect "Your services are no longer needed, effective immediately." Nelson was not given any reason for the dismissal. He tells us he doesn't know and doesn't think it useful to speculate, or even to dwell privately on why he might have been put off.

New Jersey Turnpike operations veteran and implementer of several electronic toll systems Fran O'Connor has left ETCC for Atkins where his job description is principal project director, national tolls sector. He'll continue to be based in Edison NJ.

RS&H (Reynolds Smith & Hills) have appointed two new vice-presidents to their tolls practice. The new hires are Kevin Hoeflich and Jerry Ramos both from Atkins/PBS&J. They join the company soon after it lost well known toll figure Max Crumit.

Longtime PBS&J consultant Max Crumit is an interim executive director (ED). Crumit will run the tumultuous Orlando toll agency for about six months while a search is made for a permanent ED - if OOCEA (Orlando Orange County Expressway Authority) survives as an independent entity. There are strong moves for Florida Turnpike Enterprise to take over the Orlando tollroads along with Tampa's.

The Ohio Turnpike has a new chief executive. Richard Hodges, 48 currently a lobbyist for the state workers compensation bureau was approved for the position of executive director in a four to zero vote of the state Turnpike Commission at a special meeting today. Like George Distel his predecessor Hodges is a former politician who had seven years in the state House. But unlike Distel a Democrat, Hodges is a Republican.

HTS Ltd (Hi-Tech Solutions) of Rishon, Israel, a major player worldwide in optical character recognition (OCR) recently opened a wholly owned subsidiary in New York -  HTS Americas. From  there they plan to support their growing business in north, central and south America.