Early on during the hearing on a bill to affirm records access for Baltimore’s inspector general, Councilman Ryan Dorsey explained what he found “deeply disturbing and concerning” about it.

For Dorsey, his beef with Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming appears to boil down to this: he doesn’t like her watchdog office having access to all of his emails.

“Specifically, I have an attorney-client privilege relationship in the communications that I have between members of the Law Department staff in communications that I make on a nearly daily basis,” Dorsey continued. “Do you believe that you should have access to those privileged records?”

“We’ve had that [privilege] for 20 years,” Cumming told him, at Wednesday’s hearing, before the Charter Review Special Committee that Dorsey chairs.

Councilman Jermaine Jones, likewise, signaled skepticism toward Cumming’s arguments from the get-go. He took the fact that Baltimore’s IG was stripped last January of the records access that her office and other Maryland inspectors general have had for years . . . and turned it on its head.

“I’ve heard the term used ‘it’s always been done this way, that’s the way we always do it.’ I hear that a lot sometimes in city government,” Jones said. “I just want to caution on using that notion because sometimes I think it holds the city back.”

Others in the room for the nearly three-hour hearing, packed with Cumming supporters, pushed back on Dorsey’s complaint about Cumming’s ability to see his emails.

“My emails and your emails do not belong to us,” explained Deputy Inspector General Matthew Neil, who sat beside his boss. “All of our emails are city property on city devices paid for by the taxpayers.”

Councilman Mark Conway, the bill’s sponsor, took a swing at the question too, reminding Dorsey about the waiver of confidentiality that council members and other city employees must sign.

“When I got my device – my city device – I signed it. When I came on as a city councilman, I signed it. When I worked in the mayor’s office, I signed it,” he noted. “I knew the moment I took this job, I knew that the inspector general had access to my emails.”

Conway’s remarks prompted sustained applause from a crowd that was there to urge passage of his bill.

One audience member who addressed the committee, longtime Max’s Tap House owner Ron Furman, had his own tart response to Dorsey’s unhappiness about the IG having access to his emails.

“If somebody in government has private or personal things on their city computer, they’re cheap. Buy your own!” Furman exclaimed, drawing more applause and laughter from the crowd.

In Hostile Territory

Conway and Cumming may have had the crowd eating out of their hand.

But it was another story with the lawmakers who would have to approve the bill quickly (no vote was taken Wednesday) for it to meet the tight procedural deadline to go before the Board of Elections and be placed before voters on the November ballot.

The appearance at the start of the hearing by Council President Zeke Cohen, on record opposing the bill, was a reminder of where their leadership stands. Committee members asked cautious questions about technicalities.

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

Conway, in his opening remarks, acknowledged the highly personalized, political nature of the Baltimore inspector general battle.

“I don’t know what you guys think about me or the bill or the mayor or whatever the case is,” he declared. “Make the right decision.”

Ever since the telegenic 4th District councilman announced he is challenging Maryland Democratic Party fixture Kweisi Mfume for his 7th District Congressional seat, Conway has been pretty much persona non grata in City Hall.

(Showing up with cameras last October in the open air drug market at Penn-North, where he said people told him “they felt unheard and unattended to” was regarded as an unpardonable breach by the area’s councilman, James Torrence, who tweeted, “Grifters gonna grift.”)

Now, with Bill 26-0164, Conway has sided with Cumming, another character decidedly on the outs with Mayor Brandon Scott and the council, which is generally afraid of defying him.

In January, the public learned just how squarely the Scott administration was targeting the inspector general when her access to city documents was abruptly curtailed.

• Baltimore IG Cumming says the Scott administration is blocking hr investigations (1/27/26)

As part of her role to investigate waste, fraud and abuse in city government, Cumming had been in the midst of investigating a youth diversion program, Sidestep, operated by the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).

“On the night of January 23, a midnight move occurred reminiscent of the Baltimore Colts being taken away by Mayflower [trucks] during the snowstorm,” Neil said, in a dramatic reference to the much reviled 1984 move of the city’s football team to Indianapolis that had the spectators chuckling.

“This move involved the city compromising the OIG servers, and just like that, our access was gone, and the city’s data and records were moved behind a wall,” he continued.

End-run around MPIA?

Explaining its decision, the city law department argues that the OIG’s independence and ability to obtain government records – strengthened through voter-approved charter amendments in 2018 and 2022 – is nevertheless superseded by the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA).

Conway’s bill amends the Baltimore Charter to make Cumming a “co-custodian” of city records to ensure that she would have access under the MPIA.

At the hearing, the law department’s Jeffrey Hochstetler said that the bill is “fundamentally at odds” with the MPIA.

“The Supreme Court of Maryland, along with the attorney general, are very clear that no charter amendment or any other local law can circumvent the PIA,” he said.

Several bill proponents brought up the statement, made by Attorney General Anthony Brown to The Brew, that a member of his office had produced a boilerplate “advice letter,” rather than a formal opinion that supported the city’s position. He called it the kind of summary that “could have been written by a second-year law student.”

“The MPIA was never conceived as an internal bureaucratic shield for public officials’ malfeasance”  – Ethics Board Director J. Christoph Amberger.

Councilman Zac Blanchard asked if the committee could now request a formal opinion from Brown’s office. He was told by Dorsey that the City Council is not authorized to do so, but the mayor is, though that could take a long time to pursue.

The law department speakers were firm. Conway’s Bill 26-0064, Hochstetler said, “would amount to an illegal end run around the PIA.”

“It absolutely does not,” Ethics Board Director J. Christoph Amberger shot back, disputing Hochstetler when his turn came to speak.

“The MPIA was never conceived as an internal bureaucratic shield for public officials’ malfeasance,” Amberger declared.

Redaction Accusation

One seeming “gotcha” moment in the hearing came when Hochstetler accused Cumming of “misrepresentation” over the photo she circulated months ago on social media of blacked-out documents, which represented approximately 200 pages of financial records that she said were redacted by the law department.

“Most of those redactions were actually the documents already in the possession of the agency because they’ve been redacted by the vendors,” Hochstetler declared. “These redactions were not by the law department.”

Echoing him, Deputy City Solicitor Stephen Salsbury told the Council committee, “Those were actually redacted by the original third party.”

Dorsey reminded the committee of the accusation before gaveling the hearing to a close.

“I want to thank the Law Department for correcting the record,” he said. “It was news to me that the very publicized records that have been redacted were not actually redacted by the city at all, and I think that that’s really important for public understanding of that matter.”

Could it be, as Dorsey and the lawyers seemed to be implying, that all 200-plus pages Cumming received had not in fact been redacted by Law?

Asked by The Brew, the Mayor’s Office explained they were only referring to 17 pages.

“There are redactions on roughly 200 pages out of more than 2,000 pages of documents produced for the OIG, and some of these were redacted by the Law Department in accordance with the MPIA,” a statement from Scott’s office clarified.

“The portion of the documents the Law Department representatives were addressing during the hearing included 17 pages of supporting documentation submitted by a vendor to MONSE for reimbursement, which contained redactions of their internal bank statements” unrelated charges for which they were not seeking reimbursement, the administration’s statement said.

A review of the 218 pages of redactions, an exhibit in Cumming’s lawsuit, shows redactions throughout.

“Honor the wishes of voters”

With Bill 26-0064 facing tough odds in Dorsey’s committee, Cumming’s prospects appear to hang on that still-pending lawsuit filed against the Mayor and City Council to get her access back.

Her office’s work has been hampered by 18 subpoenas filed since March that they still have received no documents for, she said at the hearing. The Law Department maintains that Cumming may only subpoena outside entities, not city agencies.

Bill supporters Wednesday said what was at stake was not just the effectiveness of Cumming’s office, but the future of the city itself.

“If the same energy used for fighting to keep access to these records was used for our schools, for our businesses, guess what? We’d be a lot better than we are,” said Terence Dickson, owner of Terra Cafe.

Important information uncovered by the inspector general was only unearthed because the office had records access, said Gayle Guilford, chair of the of the OIG Advisory Board. She recalled the case of a jailed city employee being paid his wages for six months on a weekly basis.

“If it had not been for access to the time records, no one would have known,” Guilford said. “They need direct access to Baltimore City billing systems, time systems, emails and outside access with vendors and other entities.”

Cumming’s investigations last year into hazardous conditions for city sanitation workers uncovered devastating information about deplorable conditions and lax policies – findings that embarrassed the Scott administration.

• Brew special series: Unsafe conditions for city workers

Several Bureau of Solid Waste workers attended yesterday’s hearing to praise Cumming and warn lawmakers who vote to curtail her ability to do her job.

“Election time come around, I’ll make sure some of you don’t get in there,” AFSCME Local 44 President Stancil McNair said. “We support her fully.”

“Not giving the IG access, as you are doing right now, simply perpetuates that perception that we are hiding things here”  – Resident Deb O’Neil.

Several Baltimore County residents likened the assault on Cumming to attacks on their inspector general, Kelly Madigan, which ignited a political firestorm.

“In Baltimore County, we too, have seen political efforts to weaken the inspector general,” said Peta Richkus, the former Maryland secretary of general services. “The proposed legislation does not expand IG authority. It restores clarity and honors the wishes of the voters.”

Also urging passage of the bill was Baltimore resident Deb O’Neil, who reminded the committee that, like the county, the city has a recent past marked by criminally indicted elected officials.

“We have a well deserved national reputation for corruption in office – not giving the IG access as you are doing right now simply perpetuates that perception that we are hiding things here,” she said. “Sunlight, as everybody knows, is the best disinfectant. Let the Inspector General shine as bright a light as possible by passing this law.”