Councilman Mark Conway told a visibly unenthusiastic City Council he will call for a vote tonight on his charter amendment bill to ensue that the Baltimore inspector general gets full access to city financial and payroll records currently denied by the mayor’s office.

“I know it’s a very sensitive and political topic,” Conway said at today’s Council luncheon. “We do have a responsibility to think what it means for transparency that the inspector general does not have the same access [to records] she’s always had.”

Conway is the only sponsor of the bill that, if approved by the Council and withstanding an almost certain veto by Mayor Brandon Scott, would ask voters in November if they want to restore the inspector general’s unrestricted access to city documents.

6:20 p.m. UPDATE: The Council voted 13-1 to keep the Conway bill in committee, killing the bill’s chances of making the deadlines needed to be presented to voters as a charter amendment in November. Councilwoman Sharon Green Middleton was absent. 

A boisterous crowd of residents came to a hearing last Wednesday to voice support for the measure and for embattled Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming.

For more than two hours, the Council’s Charter Review Special Committee heard testimony that overwhelmingly supported the bill and questioned why the Scott administration is denying the watchdog agency – charged with investigating financial waste, fraud and abuse in city government – full access to city records.

Slim Chance of Approval

Because the committee failed to vote on the measure, Conway said the only possible way to get the initiative on the ballot in November is to get a favorable vote from the full Council tonight.

That appears highly unlikely.

As it stands, no other Council member has voiced support for the bill, which would mean defying both the mayor and Council President Zeke Cohen, who again today expressed reservations about the bill while voicing his commitment to government transparency.

“My concern is moving this when there are conditional challenges with this bill,” Cohen said.

• Council President Cohen won’t support Conway’s IG records access bill (4/7/26)

According to Conway, “I introduced the bill on April 6 and requested a hearing by April 22. Initially, they wouldn’t hold a hearing until May 13, but I pushed for May 6th. But I did not get a vote.”

“I didn’t guarantee you a vote,” Cohen said after the hearing, Conway told The Brew, while the committee chair, Councilman Ryan Dorsey, refused to pick up his phone calls.

At today’s luncheon, Councilwoman Phylicia Porter inquired whether the Council couldn’t conduct a study on this issue.

Conway replied that would leave the inspector general’s office without the ability to examine city records between now and 2028, the next election when a charter amendment could be introduced to voters.