Baltimore court filings allege city accessed inspector general servers 433 times

Baltimore’s struggle over who controls the inspector general’s files turned sharper when new court filings said the city’s Office of Information Technology accessed shared servers 433 times between April 14 and April 17, the same day a hearing was held in the case. The filings, tied to Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming’s lawsuit, say the access happened without the watchdog office’s knowledge or permission and raise a basic question for City Hall: can Baltimore’s internal overseers still work if the administration being watched also controls the gates to their records?

Assistant Inspector General for IT Operations Bryan Bartsch said he had kept city-approved access to certain accounts for about five years before it was cut off. He warned that without that access he can no longer vouch for the quality or completeness of the information delivered to the Office of Inspector General, and said work that once took hours or days can now take months. The filings also said an outside user account had the ability to remove files and folders or modify data without going through normal permission processes.

The dispute escalated after the Scott administration cut off the inspector general’s access to city email and server systems in January 2026, following its accusation that the office had obtained “unapproved and unfettered access” to a lawyer’s confidential work product. Cumming’s April 14 complaint said the city’s new approach would have blocked access to information in more than 100 investigations. Of 324 investigations completed since January 2018, the filing said 104 involved matters that would have been shielded under the city’s Maryland Public Information Act interpretation, and those cases identified about $38.9 million in fraud, waste or abuse.

The fight has already produced an open judicial rebuke of the city’s position. Retired Associate Baltimore Circuit Judge Pamela J. White said from the bench on April 17 that the watchdog’s ability to enforce subpoenas had been “crushed” by the city solicitor’s office, and she described an “irreconcilable conflict” between city lawyers and the inspector general over how subpoenas and investigations should work.

The stakes stretch beyond one dispute over records. Baltimore voters approved charter changes in 2018 and 2022 that were described as reinforcing the office’s independence, and former Mayor Martin O’Malley created the watchdog by executive order in 2005. On May 14, Mayor Brandon Scott unveiled a four-step legislative package that would seek a state-law change exempting the inspector general from the Maryland Public Information Act, along with a new audit trail system, a conflict-resolution process, a designated legal representative for the office and quarterly performance reviews. Councilman Mark Conway called the plan cosmetic. The outcome will help determine whether Baltimore’s inspector general can investigate City Hall with real independence, or whether access to the records needed to do that work can still be cut off from inside City Hall.