It happened to Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming suddenly, over a snowy weekend in January: her online access to city records was cut off. This followed a subpoena issued by her office demanding the unredacted financial records for a youth program run by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE). The documents that finally came back from the city DID include redactions – among them more than 200 pages with redactions that the Law Department acknowledged were almost entirely made by them. Under changes imposed by the City Solicitor, at the behest of Mayor Brandon Scott, information that Cumming’s office “could previously gather within hours or days will now take months to collect” and could be redacted by city lawyers invoking attorney-client privilege, as well as the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA), Cumming said, in the lawsuit she later filed. Scott’s action, Cumming has said, cripples her ability to carry out her office’s mission to investigate waste and financial fraud in city government . . . and ignores two voter-approved charter amendments meant to secure the office's powers and independence. The Scott administration, for its part, has said it curtailed her powers because the Inspector General’s office was in violation of state law and the rules of attorney-client privilege. “An account associated with the Inspector General’s Office had gained unapproved and unfettered access to the lawyer’s legally protected confidential work product and communications,” the unusual Saturday March 24 press release. The judge hearing Cumming complaint, meanwhile, seemed to side with Cumming, observing that the city solicitor’s actions “have foreclosed, cut off, shut down any enforcement or enforceability option on the part of the inspector general to pursue its subpoenas and to advance its investigatory responsibilities.” While that lawsuit is pending in Circuit Court, a state bill that would have given Cumming her access back died in committee. So, most likely, will a bill introduced by City Councilman Mark Conway. Most recently, the Scott administration has introduced City Council bills that would make the OIG’s reduced powers a matter of city law.
