Media organizations’ challenge to the city’s redaction of the names of donors to a legal defense fund for Nick and Marilyn Mosby moved ahead this week, when the Appellate Court of Maryland heard oral arguments in the case.

Representing Baltimore Brew and the Baltimore Sun, attorney Michael R. McCann argued that the Public Information Act Compliance Board was correct in 2023 when it ordered the city to release the names of 130-plus contributors to the online fundraising site for the Mosbys.

The board likened the payments to “campaign finance activity . . . which is commonly accepted as disclosable.”

“Not one of these persons on this donor list – when they got on the internet and made this donation and entered their name on the donor list – had any expectation whatsoever that their names would be private,” McCann said, speaking Tuesday before the three-judge panel in Annapolis.

Michael P. Redmond, chief solicitor and director of the appellate practice group, was there to argue the city’s position – that the Board had erred because the names are exempt from public disclosure under a provision of the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA) that excludes:

“…. information about the finances of an individual, including assets, income, liabilities, net worth, bank balances, financial history or activities or creditworthiness.”

But before Redmond’s time came to speak, Judge Kathryn Grill Graeff asked a question that appeared to make his argument for him.

“If you give a thousand dollars, isn’t that giving information that you have $1,000 to give? Isn’t that financial information?” Graeff asked McCann.

McCann disagreed, noting the language of that provision, Section 4-336, and pointing to the words “about the finances” and “the examples that are given following the comma: ‘assets, income, etc.’”

“That language suggests more than just ‘a payment,’” he argued. “It must indicate some value or something that any reasonable person, frankly, would believe to be private.”

Battle Over Secrecy

“The Mosby 2021 Defense Fund” was set up for then-City Council President Nick Mosby and his wife, Marilyn Mosby, after they came under a criminal investigation.

The investigation led to the conviction of Marilyn Mosby, Baltimore’s former state’s attorney, on mortgage fraud and perjury counts during two separate trials. She was sentenced to 12 months of home confinement and three years of supervised release.

In the nearly four years since the fund was created, Marilyn Mosby, who lost her re-election bid, got a job with a California-based nonprofit and has appealed her convictions.

Ex-husband Nick Mosby, who failed to win re-election last year, has been appointed to a seat on the State Lottery and Gaming Control Commission.

But the legal battle over the secrecy surrounding the high-profile couple’s fund continues.

It began when the Baltimore Board of Ethics subpoenaed the list, found that some donors were persons doing business with the city and ordered Nick Mosby to disclose all the names. It seemed a surprisingly strong move for an oversight board frequently criticized as weak.

Circuit Court Judge Lawrence P. Fletcher-Hill upheld the Ethics Board’s ruling, finding that Mosby violated city ethics laws and ordering him to turn over the donor names.

But when the Ethics Board released the list, showing more than $14,000 in donations, all the names were blacked out. Only the amounts, donation dates and other information were still visible.

The Brew and Sun filed a complaint about the Ethics Board’s action with the MPIA Compliance Board, which ruled in favor of the media organizations, saying the city had violated the Act. The city was ordered to disclose the names.

This prompted an appeal to the Circuit Court by then-acting city solicitor Ebony Thompson, who argued that the Compliance Board’s ruling would place an “unworkable burden on local government record custodians.”

Siding with the city – and overturning the Compliance Board – Fletcher-Hill upheld the city’s name redaction.

The Brew and Sun appealed his ruling in separate motions (0340-24 and 0371-24) being considered together by the Appellate Court as In the Matter of the Petition of the Mayor and City Council.

Flaws Alleged

Addressing the court on behalf of the city Tuesday, Redmond argued that the Compliance Board’s decision ordering disclosure was flawed.

It “made up its own exception found nowhere else in the statute, nor in any prior caselaw, for financial activity that is somehow political in nature or that was similar enough in kind to the sort of political donations that other laws sometimes require to be disclosed,” he said.

Judge Anne K. Albright pressed Redmond about the information on the donor spreadsheet that had not been redacted:

“The amounts, when the transactions occurred, whether they were debit or credit cards, which credit card – Amex or Discover, which financial institution, zipcodes – that’s a lot of information about somebody, a lot which most people would agree is financial,” she said.

“So, if that was not crossed out how do you justify the fact that the names were crossed out?” Albright asked.

With the names removed it becomes “no longer identifiable information about an individual,” he said. “Anonymizing records is a frequent way that the city endeavors to comply with the public information act’ ….  without impinging on this individual’s privacy.