Judge asked by Scott administration to seal parts of inspector general’s lawsuit against city
City Solicitor Thompson argues that Inspector General Cumming included privileged information that needs to be kept from the public
Above: Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming and City Solicitor Ebony Thompson.
In another escalation of the bitter dispute over record access between the city and Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, the Scott administration has asked a circuit court judge to seal from public view parts of the IG’s recent court complaints.
In a motion filed late yesterday, City Solicitor Ebony Thompson asked Judge Pamela J. White to strike from Cumming’s complaint eight exhibits and related material submitted last Friday and Tuesday.
The material, Thompson said, includes “attorney-client communications, attorney work product, investigatory confidentiality and other sensitive information.”
Thompson further requested that the court forbid Cumming’s lawyers, H. Mark Stichel and Anthony J. May, from “publishing or uploading onto any court docket unredacted materials containing . . . sensitive information of the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, including all its units and officials, without the written consent of the City Solicitor for the Mayor and City Council of Baltimore or her designee.”
Some of the material the city wants stricken from the record was disclosed in an article in The Brew.
It includes correspondence from former City Solicitor Andre A. Davis, who endorses the inspector general’s right to enforce subpoenas, and from former Acting Solicitor Dana P. Moore, who instructs the city’s technology office to provide the OIG with full access to city servers and databases.
The city also wants sealed correspondence between Cumming and Thompson after the Scott administration began denying the inspector general access to payroll information from the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) and, more recently, rejected a request by the inspector general for independent counsel (see below).
An excerpt of a letter from Cumming to Thompson when the city began restricting her office’s access to MONSE records and BELOW Thompson denies Cumming’s request for independent counsel, saying her office is “part of one legal entity” headed by the mayor and City Council. Thompson wants this correspondence redacted from the public record.
Subordinate to Law Office
Today’s motion continues the city’s argument that the Office of the Inspector General is part and parcel of city government and cannot enforce a subpoena or otherwise act independently from the law office.
Such was the case prior to 2018 when the inspector general reported directly to the city solicitor, an appointee of the mayor.
That year voters approved a charter amendment to create an “independent” inspector general governed by an advisory board. In 2022, voters approved – by an 86% margin – another amendment that removed the mayor, city solicitor and other political officeholders from the advisory board.
In its April 10 complaint co-signed by the Advisory Board Chair Gayle Guilford and Secretary James Godey, Cumming said that the city’s “brazen refusal to comply with the OIG’s subpoenas will cause irreparable harm to the inhabitants of Baltimore City . . . by denying the public, through the OIG, the ability to adequately investigate complaints of fraud, financial waste and abuse in city government.”
The complaint noted that under the restraints now placed on the office by the Scott administration, the OIG would not have been able to investigate at least 104 cases since 2018 where more than $38 million was identified as constituting waste and fraud in Baltimore government.
UPDATE: Cumming declined to comment on the city’s motion because it is under litigation.