Rules Against Baltimore City Mayor Brandon Scott In His Dispute With City Inspector Isabel Cummings
It’s been a battle since 2025. City Inspector Isabel Cummings’ job is to audit and oversee spending, actions, etc. of the Baltimore City government, including the Mayor’s Office. The Inspector was reviewing financial records of the city’s controversial MONSE (Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement), a group created to prevent crime in the city. Those records included all checks, expenditures, contracts, etc. issued in the program.
Suddenly in the middle of this investigation, the Mayor’s Office stop supplying documents or provided heavily redacted documents. This was not what would normally be done. Their claim was that they were protecting the identity of juvenile offenders and other members of the MONSE “Sidestep” program from being disclosed to the public.
Cumming’s office issued a subpoena to the mayor’s office regarding the “Sidestep” program, a program mainly focused on diversion of juveniles from crime. The city’s law department replied with hundreds of pages of heavily redacted information fell within the regulations of the Maryland Public Information Act and attorney-client privilege.
Cumming’s response was that MPIA regulations did NOT apply since it was her office’s job to monitor and audit city programs. The IG also claimed this was the first time in 8 years that the city had refused her request. She filed a 21-page lawsuit against Mayor Scott to affirm her right to enforce subpoenas and obtain unredacted MONSE records. She used an outside pro-bono law firm.
At the same time, the City Solicitor’s office said that Cummings’ request was a usurpation of Mayor Scott’s powers to direct city operations. They tried to dismiss the OIG’s lawsuit.
From there it has been a “back and forth” between Scott and Cummings. Scott went so far as to attempt to re-write and restructure the job of Office of the Inspector General. He called Cummings ineffective and untrustworthy. Meanwhile, Cummings testified to the city council that her office has saved the city $10.9M in FY2025 and $4.2M more in FY2026.
Mayor Scott then engaged the firm Baker Tilly to do an independent forensic review of the Sidestep program.
In late May, 2026, the Mayor’s office filed a motion to disqualify the IG’s independent outside counsel. That motion was denied on June 2 by Judge Pamela White. White also ruled that the Mayor’s office failed to show how the unsealing of documents would violate federal or state law.
This is a major victory for the City IG and for public transparency, something that Scott seems afraid of. Sadly, there are many more Maryland officials who feel the same way.
Jan Greenhawk, Author
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