Asked by Baltimore City lawyers to throw out Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming’s lawsuit seeking to regain her office’s access to city records, Circuit Court Judge Pamela J. White today made no ruling. But she signaled she was none too keen on the city’s motion.

Before hearing arguments in the controversial case, White described how much she has studied her “dog-eared” copies of both parties’ voluminous filings.

“I have spilled coffee on them. I have asterisks. I have stickies all over the place,” she said, reciting the text of the 2018 voter-approved charter amendment strengthening the powers of the watchdog agency and further quoting from “The Green Book,” the handbook of best practices established by the Association of Inspectors General that Cumming said her office strictly adheres to.

“I stopped counting the number of times the words ‘independent’ and ‘independence’ showed up,” White said, declaring that she is “obsessed” with the “clear, unambiguous language of the charter’s Article X” that established an independent Office of the Inspector General.

She warned the trio of attorneys representing the Brandon Scott administration that they will need to “figure out how to disabuse me of that notion.”

The city attorneys weren’t the only ones coming in for tough words from White, a retired jurist with 15 years on the bench.

White chided Cumming’s lawyers for quoting in their filings her remarks from an April hearing as if they constituted law (she said they did not) and further remarked that the transcription they used “was full of errors.”

The city’s Renita Collins pounced on an apparent mistake by the plaintiffs – they submitted an affidavit from former City Solicitor Andre Davis without the required signature.

Collins asked the judge to toss the affidavit out, and White replied that she would consider accepting a second signed copy.

Making an Impression

These were the opening salvos at the latest juncture of a case that has convulsed City Hall since January, and which today drew a crowd that packed a courtroom on the fourth floor of the Clarence Mitchell Courthouse.

The conflict surfaced when the Scott administration sharply curtailed the OIG’s ability to obtain city records amid Cumming’s investigation of the SideStep youth diversion program operated by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).

City Solicitor Ebony Thompson threw the opening punch by declaring that the watchdog office’s efforts to obtain personnel and financial records were unlawful under the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA).

Cumming said that state law had never governed her office’s mission under the City Charter to investigate waste, abuse and financial fraud. Blocked from direct records access, she filed suit in February asking the court to enforce her subpoenas.

Because of other judicial obligations, White said that she would not able to render a ruling within her usual 30 days.

Instead she listened to about three hours of arguments, including from the 12-page sworn submission by Davis, a fellow jurist with 30 years on the state and federal bench.

Signature or no signature, Davis’ submission had evidently made an impression.

“I noticed it was Andre Davis who was the city solicitor who was responsible” for supporting the 2018 charter amendment, White said, noting that she “gained some appreciation for how the transition [to a more independent OIG] was to take place.”

Collins dismissed Davis’ insights as dated.

“Solicitor Davis retired in 2020. His personal knowledge terminates after that,” she said.

Judge White: “So what?”

Addressing the court, Collins said the case is “not about document redactions,” but about the IG’s “access to the work product” of the city’s lawyers.

“What’s the consequences of that? In other words, so what?” White demanded. “What’s the damage to your client in light of the responsibilities of the OIG?”

Collins pushed back, describing “the idea that the IG can just go rifling through the records.”

“You’re assuming the OIG is rifling through the files,” White said, noting that the city charter is “quite specific about the manner in which the IG conducts investigations.”

Pressed to explain what improper use the IG could make of its access to records, Collins offered the example of the OIG gaining access to information about other city agencies’ budget deliberations.

The example brought an incredulous response from White.

“So your supposition is the OIG is rifling through budget documents to advance its own interests? Is it your suggestion that the rules should be set aside because of this supposition?”

Collins described the MPIA as the supreme governing law guiding the Scott administration’s actions to restrict Cumming’s office.

“There is nothing in the Maryland Constitution or any ballot initiative or city charter provision that trumps the MPIA,” she declared, observing that Cumming could “go to the MPIA Compliance Board” if she objected to any redaction.

“No time for rifling”

Attorney Anthony May, representing Cumming and two members of her Citizens Advisory Board, said the case is “about whether an independent watchdog can be stripped of its powers by the very offices it is charged with monitoring.”

Since 2018, he said, the city has provided the office with direct access to documents “without having to make individual requests to get the information from the departments it is investigating.”

That changed in 2024 after Thompson became city solicitor and took the position that the MPIA prevails, allowing information to be broadly withheld under its confidentiality exceptions.

May said the OIG already observes The Green Book, “the gold standard for confidentiality.” And he noted that the results of its investigations, which are released to the public and the media, are summaries that do not name names.

“Any suggestion of some sort of rifling is simply not the case,” he said. “The OIG receives 800 complaints a year. They don’t have time for rifling.”

Since the cut-off of records access, the OIG’s investigations have been stymied by the Scott administration’s failure to respond to subpoenas, May argued.

Collins disputed this statement, saying information requests are being considered “on a rolling basis.”

May replied that wasn’t true, saying there are currently 49 subpoenas from the IG office that the city has not responded to.

“It’s not that the job has become harder,” he said. “It is that it has become impossible.”