For the average Baltimore City employee who leaves their job in good standing, unused personal leave, vacation and sick time pay are the reward for their service, along with a monthly pension, if qualified.

But for a select few in City Hall, “permission leave” and “extended separations” added thousands and, at times, tens of thousands of dollars to their severance pay.

Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming yesterday revealed that 15 executive-level staffers were paid more than $312,000 while not actually working, awarded permission leave or placed on extended separations from their positions.

For example, five members of the mayor’s office received permission leave and were paid $147,265 for 275 days past their last actual day on the job, according to the report.

Similarly, a top employee in City Administrator Faith Leach’s office “was allowed to be on the City’s payroll for 49 workdays and one holiday after their departure for a total gross pay of $43,864.16,” Cumming reported. When their phantom employment entered on the city Workday timekeeping system ended, the departed employee picked up another $23,068.97 for personal leave, vacation and sick leave.

“Providing compensatory time without recorded documentation of the hours worked could create a perception of inequity” between how management and rank-and-file workers are treated, the report says.

Councilman Mark Conway, who introduced a bill shot down by the City Council to restore the OIG’s powers, was more blunt.

“The OIG’s latest report shows hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars lost to ghost workers who remained on payroll after they had effectively left city government,” he said. “The conduct described ranges from lax procedures and exploited ambiguities to serious compliance failures that demand further scrutiny.”

Firing back, the mayor’s office said the payments were “standard and extremely common HR practices utilized across industries” that Cumming’s report “sensationalizes.”

In a response included with the report, City Administrator Leach said that, while she will not go into detail on specific personnel actions, administrative leave “is, without question, granted equitably across the entire City workforce.”

“It is the City’s practice,” she continued, “to use its discretion as to the amount of administrative leave or severance pay to offer to employees in these cases. While this may result in different severance packages or amounts of administrative leave being offered to different employees, this by itself should not result in discriminatory disparate impact. Rather, that use of discretion is paramount to the City’s ability to manage employee separation and other employment matters in such a way that protects the integrity of operations and ensures the most efficient use of City resources.”

Rising Tensions

The report comes as Cumming and Mayor Brandon Scott continue to battle over the watchdog’s access – or lack of access – to city records and her lawsuit seeking court enforcement of OIG subpoenas.

Charged with investigating complaints of waste, fraud and abuse in city government, the IG office has recently written a series of reports critical of the Scott administration’s financial management.

The reports have exposed the spending of nearly $900,000 for office parties, flowers, meals, and food and drink at Ravens and Orioles games, using $516,000 in Covid relief funds to pay for music acts at Artscape 2025, spending millions of dollars on a still-unfinished website redesign and, potentially the most serious, a criminal referral to law enforcement agencies of potential fraud at a youth diversion program.

Last week Scott announced he would introduce legislation to place Cumming’s office under the oversight of a “designated legal representative” chosen by the same city solicitor who has denied the office access to unredacted records.

Cumming’s latest report pointedly notes that “this investigation was completed before the City’s removal of the OIG’s direct access to records, files, and communications on February 6, 2026.”

Under the current setup required, Scott says, by state law, it is doubtful that the payments would have been exposed because Cumming does not have access to Workday time records and the emails between staff. As a result, Conway said, “the public may never have learned about these payments to ghost workers.”

Payments to Agency Heads and Others

In addition to departing mayoral staff, the report found that two unnamed agency directors received permission leave – one receiving the leave at the time of their departure and the other receiving the leave while still an active employee. These directors were paid $35,668 for 42 workdays.

At other city agencies, the IG found eight officials received permission leave when ending their employment and received over $76,000 for 229 days.

Without access to city records, “the public may never have learned about these payments to ghost workers”  – Councilman Mark Conway.

In some cases, they were presented with a separation agreement. The Law Department gave the IG a rationale for this approach – to ensure that the employee who signed the agreement would not sue the city for “wrongful termination.”

The same officials continued to get city health benefits and accrued leave – another privilege not granted to rank-and-file city workers. After their separation date in the Workday payroll system, “some could be eligible to receive any severance pay and unused leave payouts that they are due,” Cumming wrote.

Continuance of Prior Practices

The issue of departed employees remaining on the city payroll is not new.

Back in 2021, Cumming’s office sent a report to Scott’s office about eight employees at the Baltimore City Office of Information Technology (BCIT) who were paid nearly $150,000 in permission leave. During the investigation, the city’s longtime labor commissioner, Deborah Moore-Carter, informed the OIG that the city “did not have an official permission leave policy” and individual agencies had the “discretion” to make up their own rules.

Sometimes permission and separation agreements were submitted to Moore-Carter’s office, sometimes not.

In the case of the departing senior official in Leach’s office, “the Department of Human Resources [was notified] that the employee was to stay in ‘pay status,’” Cumming wrote. “The CAO’s Office later wrote that they would be extending the CAO Employee’s permission leave and asked for the remaining compensatory hours to be exhausted as well.

“However, Workday time entries show permission leave was not entered for the CAO Employee. The CAO Employee work hours were entered as ‘regular’ work hours. The OIG learned that the CAO Employee was allowed to be on the City’s payroll for 49 workdays and one holiday after their departure for a total gross of $43,864.16.”

In the case of Mayor’s Office Employee 6, “Workday records indicated no time entries for MO Employee 6 for the last two weeks of their employment. The OIG found the MO Employee 6 received payment for 25 workdays before their separation date, totaling a gross payment of $9,143.38. MO Employee 6 received their vacation payout of $6,858.03 after their separation.”

Enabling this workaround was a termination letter signed by a “mayor’s executive” that notified the employee to ‘transition your work to your supervisor and take the time [while paid by the city] to look for other job opportunities.’” A review of the MO Employee 6’s correspondence “showed they only sent one message after the termination letter,” the report said.

Responding to the report, Leach wrote:

“While the administration will not go into detail on specific personnel actions, I do want to clarify the facts around the administrative leave that was offered to an employee outside of termination. The report refers to an employee whose administrative leave was not associated with a separation agreement. Instead, the leave aligned with an authorized personnel action applicable to that employee. Additionally, during the relevant period, the employee remained actively engaged in City business and documented more than 60 hours in meetings, exclusive of email correspondence and other administrative responsibilities.

“The report also refers to an employee’s prior use of compensatory time. The employee’s last recorded compensatory time entry occurred on May 8, 2024. The employee’s compensatory time bank had not been updated to reflect hours worked beyond the normal tour of duty for more than a year and a half. Further the employee was part of the citywide Employee Recognition Program, which provides administrative leave for exceptional city service.”

• For The Brew’s full coverage, see “IG Fights Back After Mayor Neuters her Powers.”