I added the following lines at the beginning of my SQL commands and it resolved all my problems.

SET NOCOUNT ON
SET ANSI_NULLS ON
SET QUOTED_IDENTIFIER OFF

I suspect the NOCOUNT is the important line. I discovered this while refactoring my solution. I had moved the transaction handling to SQL and was trying to send the error status back as a result set. I wasn't getting the result set. I had seen this behavior before and it rang my bell. Thanks.