There is a hearing scheduled for next Tuesday in the case filed by Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming to try to stop City Solicitor Ebony Thompson from blocking access by the Office of Inspector General (OIG) to the records of city agencies.

It is possible that the rulings by Circuit Court Judge Pamela J. White on the pending motions may end the case, subject to appeal.

Regardless of the outcome of the case, it is important to keep in mind that this is a legal battle that Cumming never should have been required to fight.

It was the gratuitous, concerted effort initiated by Mayor Brandon Scott and his solicitor to cripple the ability of the OIG to investigate corruption in city government that forced Cumming to sue to preserve the effectiveness of her office.

Here are my observations of what has been going on, both legally and politically, over the last seven months.

Sidestep Touches a Nerve

That effort began in earnest when the OIG opened an investigation into whether the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE) paid fraudulent invoices in the course of administering SideStep, a pre-arrest youth diversion program that ended in 2024.

I believe that Scott and Solicitor Thompson saw their chance to undermine Cumming’s investigation, and they took it.

On January 16, 2026, MONSE responded to a request for records made by the OIG with much of the requested information redacted by the city law department from the documents. The OIG issued a subpoena for the redacted information on January 20.

On January 24, a Saturday, the mayor’s office issued a press release announcing that a city lawyer discovered that the OIG had direct access to the city Law Department files, and that the city’s information technology office cut off that access to stop the “violation” of attorney-client privilege.

Never mind that language in the city charter precludes city officials from asserting the attorney-client privilege to keep information from the OIG; the announcement was widely reported by the media and set the stage for what followed.

Letter Triggers Dramatic Shift in Practice

On February 3, a Maryland assistant attorney general, Shaunee Harrison, wrote a letter in response to a request for advice from State Senator Antonio Hayes, a political ally of Scott ostensibly concerned about the legality of the OIG’s access to confidential records.

The advice letter referred to a well-known 15-year-old case decided by the Maryland Supreme Court, Shropshire v. Montgomery County, stating that the case held that under the Maryland Public Information Act (PIA) the Montgomery County IG could not obtain a particular personnel record from the county despite a provision in the county charter giving the IG access to all county records.

Harrison’s boss, Attorney General Anthony Brown, later described her letter as “just a summary” that “could have been written by a second-year law student.” Brown stressed that it was not an opinion about whether the city’s oversight office is acting “within or out of bounds” in terms of compliance with the PIA.

Nevertheless, Thompson wrote her own letter on February 6 extending the denial of access to all other categories of “confidential” records. She cited Harrison’s letter as the basis for her conclusion that “when a mandatory exception to disclosure [under the PIA] applies, the law requires the city to deny inspection or redact the protected portions.”

Her conclusion contradicted advice given in 2024 by the head of the legal opinions and advice section in Thompson’s office, Hilary Ruley, and reversed years of practice by city agencies.

As I previously pointed out, neither Harrison nor Thompson mentioned that, in the Shropshire decision, the Maryland Supreme Court found that access to the relevant information in the police disciplinary file at issue in the case was extracted from “primary sources” to which the IG did have ready access, and that the IG had not demonstrated that access to the disciplinary file itself was necessary for the IG to carry out his legal responsibilities.

In other words, the court held out the possibility that it may have ruled differently under a different set of facts.

Legal Advisor Becomes Decisionmaker

In my opinion, Thompson had a duty to defend Cumming’s position (one shared by other inspectors general in the state) that direct access to the information from employees, vendors, and beneficiaries of city services that comes into the custody of city agencies in the routine course of city business (i.e., “primary sources”) is not only lawful, but necessary to do the job with which she is entrusted by the city charter.

Instead, Thompson decided to impose her own position on the city, undoubtedly encouraged by the mayor.

Judge White took notice of Thompson’s aggressive approach early in the case, observing that the OIG’s ability to enforce subpoenas for records is “not just debated, but crushed by the decisionmaking of the [city] solicitor’s office.”

White added, “The circumstances are complicated for me here by the appearance that . . . it is the city solicitor that’s the apparent decision maker not to address or enforce the OIG subpoenas, effectively substituting itself for the so-called court of competent jurisdiction.”

Judge White also challenged Thompson’s view that the solicitor’s disagreement with Cumming over the enforceability of the OIG’s subpoenas was not “an irreconcilable conflict of interest” warranting the use of outside counsel paid for by the city as provided in the charter.

The judge stated that she believed that the “the character and nature” of the OIG make it a unit of government that “ought to be represented by counsel that has not demonstrated” a conflict of interest such as the one demonstrated by the city law department.

Why Not Defend the OIG?

Unless Thompson was absolutely certain that the law on city or county IG’s access to records had been settled by the courts – which she could not possibly have been – she should have sat back and waited for employees, contractors and beneficiaries of city services allegedly aggrieved by OIG investigations to go to court to argue that the IG has no right to see information necessary to make sure that they aren’t defrauding the city.

That hasn’t happened yet and may never happen.

Why didn’t she not decide to defend the authority of an office she’s under a duty to represent?

And why not, as Judge White implied, let a “court of competent jurisdiction” decide on the enforceability of the OIG’s subpoenas?

The equivocal language in the Shropshire decision means that it is possible that the courts ultimately will determine that action by the Maryland General Assembly is necessary to secure access by local inspectors general to information necessary to root out fraud, waste and abuse.

If so, a simple, common sense tweak added to state law that gives local inspectors general the same access to records and information on the local level as given to the Office of Legislative Audits on the state level would suffice.

Such legislation should have been enacted at this year’s session of the General Assembly to end this needless controversy, but wasn’t, dying in committee despite bipartisan support.

Unfortunately, given the General Assembly’s general lack of enthusiasm for promoting openness, transparency and accountability in government, the inaction came as no surprise.

Hand-picked Lawyers

Mayor Scott recently decided to take away the task of investigating the SideStep program away from the OIG and give it to hand-picked contractors.

The decision reaffirms that his concerns about the OIG have nothing to do with the law, and everything to do with what the OIG might uncover in his administration.

Now a team of private accountants and lawyers will do what the city solicitor claims the OIG can’t do

According to the mayor’s press release, the “review team,” consisting of members of the accounting firm Baker Tilly and the law firm Hogan Lovells, will be able to do what City Solicitor Thompson claims that the OIG is legally prohibited from doing: Gain “access [to] all documents necessary” to conduct its investigation.

The private accountants and lawyers will carry out their work as independent contractors.

In legal terms, this means that Thompson apparently has concluded that, although the PIA bars access by the OIG to city agency records necessary to perform its duty under the city charter to investigate “fraud, waste and financial abuse in city government,” the PIA does not restrict access to those records by private businesses selected by the mayor to perform such investigations. That doesn’t even pass the laugh test.

The city charter confers on the OIG the power to issue subpoenas to compel production of “any information, document, report, record, account or other material” in the course of its duties.

Thompson, however, contends that the staff of the OIG has no greater right to access to city records under the PIA than members of the general public. Perhaps she would like to explain how the mayor can give independent contractors broader legal rights under the PIA than those enjoyed by the staff of the OIG.

The head of the Hogan Lovells team, Karl Racine, praised the city’s “commitment to providing us with all the tools necessary to perform an independent and comprehensive examination without interference.”

That’s a commitment the mayor certainly never made to Cumming.

A Renewed Attack on the IG

At the same time, the city has renewed what’s become an increasingly personal attack on Cumming in its latest attempt to persuade Judge White to dismiss the OIG lawsuit.

The law office accused Cumming of being on an “odyssey” intended to “elevate the OIG above all legal checks and balances” in a memorandum filed earlier this month.

The only odyssey that I see is the quest by the mayor and his solicitor to cripple the ability of the OIG to investigate corruption in city government.

Finally, a reality check:

The existence of rogue city or county inspectors general trampling on individuals’ privacy rights is not a problem.

The ample opportunity for corruption in large local governments with dubious histories and longstanding aversions to transparency and accountability such as Baltimore City and Baltimore County is a problem.

There is no doubt in my mind that the actions taken to curtail the effectiveness of their OIGs by Scott and the past two county executives in Baltimore County, Johnny Olszewski and Kathy Klausmeier, were motivated by their desire to protect themselves from political damage (or worse) from findings of fraud, waste or abuse in their administrations.

I don’t know how any reasonable person could reach any other conclusion.

• David A. Plymyer retired as Anne Arundel County Attorney after 31 years in the county law office. He can be reached at dplymyer@comcast.net and Twitter @dplymyer.