In an extraordinary legal move, Baltimore’s corruption watchdog has filed a lawsuit against Mayor Brandon Scott, saying he and his staff have obstructed her office’s investigations into financial waste and fraud in city government and are undermining her independence from political influence.

“Today we file this action for the residents and taxpayers of Baltimore City to allow the OIG to do the job the people have asked it to do,” said Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming.

“This fight is for the people and, as I always say, never underestimate the power of the people.”

The 21-page suit, filed today in Baltimore Circuit Court, specifically asks the court to affirm the inspector general’s right to enforce a subpoena issued last month for financial and payroll records from the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE).

The administration earlier produced hundreds of pages of heavily redacted MONSE documents, saying they were censored under the Maryland Public Information Act because, in a novel legal interpretation, state law preempts local law in the disclosure of government personnel and financial records.

Cumming was joined by Gayle Guilford and James Godey, chair and secretary of the OIG Advisory Board, a citizen group charged by voters in 2022 with overseeing OIG operations. (Previously, the board was composed of councilmen, the mayor’s chief of staff and other political officials, some of whom took a dim view of her investigation into former Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.)

Earlier this month, the board approved Cumming’s request to seek pro-bono attorneys to help her prepare today’s lawsuit after City Solicitor Ebony Thompson, a Scott appointee, refused, according to Cumming, to allow her to seek independent counsel to enforce the MONSE subpoena.

A Sudden Departure

Today’s lawsuit describes steps, cited in previous Brew articles, taken by the Scott administration to halt the OIG’s ability to manage its databases, which are used to maintain the confidentiality of whistleblowers and others in investigations.

Such safeguards “allow whistleblowers to come forward and enable unbiased oversight of city government,” said attorney H. Mark Stichel, who represents the IG office and advisory board, along with attorney Anthony May.

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

• An alarming and baseless attack on Baltimore’s inspector general (2/2/26)

Cumming said her office has had direct access to information from city offices since 2018 when she was hired as inspector general.

Last June, she said, the city “suddenly departed from its longstanding practice of cooperating with the OIG,” as her office examined programs administered by MONSE, the keystone of Mayor Scott’s violence prevention efforts, which was among the programs awarded $50 million in city and federal funds.

On January 24, Mayor Scott issued an unusual Saturday press release asserting that Cumming’s office “had gained unapproved and unfettered access” to legally protected work product in violation of attorney-client privilege – a claim Cumming said was false and taken without her knowledge or consultation.

City Solicitor Thompson followed that up with a February 6 letter to Scott and City Administrator Faith Leach stating that “the city must immediately implement changes in the IG’s direct access to records that will ensure compliance with state law.”

“The chilling effect of the city’s effort to deprive the OIG of its independence cannot be understated,” today’s lawsuit asserts. “For example, of the 324 investigations conducted by the OIG since January 2018, 104 involved cases that would have shielded information from the OIG under the MPIA. In those 104 cases, the OIG identified approximately $38.9 million in fraud, waste or abuse.”

Thompson’s interpretation of the MPIA law, the lawsuit continued, “has hamstrung the OIG’s ability to thoroughly conduct investigations and subpoena third-party entities. For example in the past, obtaining unredacted data from the city allowed the OIG to identify third parties (such as financial institutions) who possessed relevant information so that the OIG could then subpoena those entities. By redacting whole swaths of information, the city has deprived the OIG of its ability to identify relevant sources of information and exercise its independent subpoena authority.”

The lawsuit asks the court to require the city to comply with all outstanding OIG subpoenas and to further prevent the Scott administration from taking any actions that would “impede, inhibit or restrict” the OIG from carrying out its oversight duties as prescribed in Article X of the city charter.