BALTIMORE — Baltimore City voters are being asked to change the makeup of the advisory board for the agency that investigates fraud and financial waste.
In 2018, voters overwhelmingly supported making the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) independent, but the city’s corruption watchdog said her office still isn’t immune to political pressures. She believes Ballot Question I could change that.
And since 2018, Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming’s office has been behind some of the city’s most damning headlines, including a police overtime investigation, identifying $2 million erroneously sent to a company with tax debt, and hundreds of thousands of dollars mistakenly sent to a scammer.
The OIG has also investigated top officials.
Cumming said her investigations aren’t personal, they’re part of her job, but it can be problematic when these officers or their spouses serve on the board tasked with reviewing her performance.
“So, right there, we had an inherent conflict of interest,” Cumming said.
City Council President Nick Mosby, the husband of City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby, whose travel and expenses had been the subject of an OIG investigation, is entitled to an OIG Advisory Board seat or can select a designee.
RELATED: OIG Report: Most of Mosby's out of town travel was not approved by BOE as required
“I have never not done something because someone sat on my board and with the case that you mentioned, I was asked to do that investigation and that person doesn’t sit on my board, her relative does. But when you have a job, you do your job and that’s what I believe this office has always done,” said Cumming.
While the Board became law in 2018 and is supposed to meet annually, its first meeting wasn’t until July 2021, several months after the Mosby investigation.
Ultimately, the Board approved Cumming’s job performance, but she used the meeting to bring attention to the Board’s structure.
READ MORE: Board satisfied with performance of Baltimore's Inspector General despite some critics
“Once it became that they were going to meet for the first time, I raised the issue automatically,” said Cumming.
Councilwoman Odette Ramos then moved to bring this issue to voters by lobbying support to put it on this year’s ballot under Question I.
“I like to say it’s ‘I for independence, I for inspector general independence’ because what it does is it makes changes to the makeup of the advisory board. It removes elected officials, it removes city employees, it gives citizens of Baltimore the opportunity to serve on the Advisory Board to the Inspector General,” Cumming explained.
If approved, the Board would be made up of 11 city residents:
- 7 board members would be chosen at random from those nominated by the City Council members from their districts
- 2 members would be the heads of local law schools
- 1 board member would come from a group of certified public accountants
- 1 board member would come from a group of fraud examiners
“To make it truly random, to take out the politics to have people really interested in what this office should do,” said Cumming.
Cumming stresses their job is in the title, which is strictly to advise. Board members wouldn’t have a say in what the OIG investigates.
“They’re the ones that select the next inspector general, they’re the ones that will, if there’s a problem with the IG they’ll look into it, and they’re the ones that do the evaluation. So, you don’t want people that actually could be investigated because again it could be a conflict of interest,” said Cumming.
While Baltimore City Councilman Ryan Dorsey approved placing this measure on the ballot, he thinks it’s premature to make this change to the Board’s structure.
In an email he wrote:
"I think it’s premature to make this change. Since the 2018 ballot initiative that established the OIG and its board as they now exist, the board was supposed to have by now publicly conducted three annual reviews. But Mayors Pugh and Young never did what was required, so we’ve only seen it play out once, under Mayor Scott. Because of aspersions other elected officials cast on the OIG, a transparent attempt to deflect problems of their own making, certain people portrayed the first ever oversight of the OIG as something other than routine and working as intended. I believe the current structure should be given more time before a change is considered."
Ryan Dorsey, Baltimore City Council, District 3
