The Scott administration last night sought dismissal of a lawsuit by Baltimore’s inspector general that Circuit Court Judge Pamela J. White ruled should proceed, arguing that the mayor and city solicitor hold supreme power and authority over all city agencies.

The City Charter “designates the Mayor as the city’s chief executive officer, responsible for ensuring that all ordinances and resolutions are duly and faithfully executed [and] . . . centralizes all legal authority in one place: the City Solicitor, who heads the Department of Law,” says a memorandum filed by City Solicitor Ebony Thompson and her staff.

In 2018, city voters designated the Office of the Inspector General to be an independent agency charged with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse in city government, and in 2022 changed the composition of the IG advisory board to replace appointees of the mayor and other elected officials with a panel of citizens.

Over the last five months, IG Isabel Mercedes Cumming has been locked in a battle to obtain uncensored financial records from SideStep, a youth diversion program run by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).

In January, the administration cut off the IG’s access to the city’s email and server systems after accusing the office, in a rare Saturday press release issued just before a major snowstorm, of gaining “unapproved and unfettered access” to a lawyer’s confidential work product.

Saying she was unable to perform her duties without access to city records, Cumming filed a lawsuit to enforce a subpoena for access to unredacted MONSE records. Her office then released a report citing evidence of fraudulent invoices and falsified documents at MONSE based on information gathered before the records cutoff.

Since then, Judge White refused to disqualify the pro bono attorneys hired by Cumming, while Mayor Brandon Scott announced plans for legislation to place the watchdog agency under the oversight of a “designated legal representative” appointed by Solicitor Thompson and approved by the advisory board.

Attacking the IG’s Motivations

The latest salvo from the law department echoes a recent complaint by J.D. Merrill, Scott’s chief of staff, that “personal and political motivations” drive Cumming’s actions.

The memo dismisses her arguments to the court as “self-serving City Hall gossip, immaterial platitudes and unrelated quotes from respected past city leaders” and claims that Cumming is unwilling to follow the limitations imposed by the Maryland Public Information Act.

Instead, what the IG and her advisory board “truly seek” is “unfettered, unrestricted access to the City’s Enterprise Server Systems without regard to the constraints of the MPIA or the protections of attorney-client communication privilege, attorney work product or the deliberative processes of city government.”

What the IG and her advisory board “truly seek” is “unfettered, unrestricted access to the City’s Enterprise Server Systems,” says the law department.

The memo further asserts that Cumming “can and will use” her office as “a sieve” for transmitting protected communications – including “the internal deliberative processes of high-ranking city officials” – to “reach parties with interests adverse to the city.”

The memo does not name these parties, but Merrill’s letter faulted Cumming for posting a video on her personal social media account of an AI-generated drawing of Scott smoking a cigar, drinking what appears to be liquor, and holding up shopping bags filled with money. Merrill accused her of “vile” and “racist” conduct.

Cumming apologized for the link. She said she removed it before Merrill’s complaint was publicized after she realized the video contained the offensive drawing.

In seeking to have the OIG lawsuit dismissed, the city asserts that only the law department has the authority to institute, defend or discontinue legal actions on behalf of the city. This applies to “every municipal department, office, commission, board, authority and agency. It necessarily includes the OIG and the OIG advisory board.”

The memo continues, “A narrow exception exists, but only where the City Solicitor determines that an irreconcilable conflict of interest prevents representation. Even then, outside counsel must be approved by both the Mayor and Board of Estimates.

“Plaintiffs instead bypassed the Charter’s legal structure, gave itself the power to retain outside counsel, illegally did so, and filed suit against the very municipal corporation of which they are a part,” the memo said.

Hearing the same arguments from Renita Collins, deputy chief of litigation, at an April 16 hearing, Judge White asked how “denying the IG the opportunity to engage in their duties” was not “a conflict” between the law department and OIG.

White subsequently denied the city’s motion to dismiss the pro bono attorneys and allowed the Cumming lawsuit to proceed. A date for the next court hearing has not yet been released.