Council members question Baltimore Children and Youth Fund transparency, cite misconduct claims

Baltimore City lawmakers are questioning whether the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund can still be trusted to deliver money to the city’s young people after complaints, audit gaps and whistleblower allegations piled up around the $16 million-a-year fund.

The city Inspector General said complaints about BCYF began arriving in December 2024 and the investigation is still ongoing. The fund, which voters created through the November 2016 Question E charter amendment, was intended to be a continuing pool of money used only for programs and services for Baltimore’s children and youth. It is financed by at least $0.03 per $100 of assessed property value, along with grants and donations, and its adopted budgets rose from $14.225 million in fiscal 2024 to $15.152 million in fiscal 2025 and $16.15 million in fiscal 2026.

The governance history is part of the scrutiny. BCYF became the permanent fiscal agent on July 1, 2020, after an interim arrangement with Associated Black Charities. The Baltimore City Board of Estimates approved the first permanent bylaws on December 15, 2021, then approved the initial permanent board on December 22, 2021. Alysia Lee was selected as BCYF’s inaugural president in early 2022.

But the money trail now sits at the center of the fight. The inspector general cited nearly $50 million in BCYF Workday invoices from fiscal 2023 through fiscal 2025 and said only three of ten listed invoices included all supporting documents and grantees. Separate reporting has said the Baltimore City Department of Audits had no record of BCYF financial audits for fiscal years 2022, 2023 and 2024. Baltimore Brew reported BCYF has spent about $75 million in taxpayer money since 2020, invoiced more than $26 million over two years without naming grantees in the way a Finance Department memorandum required, and distributed another $21 million with only minimalist revenue-and-expense summaries.

The allegations have also raised a public-records issue. A former BCYF employee told Spotlight on Maryland that leadership coached staff on how to avoid creating records that could be reached through Maryland Public Information Act requests, including using unnamed calendar meetings and moving sensitive conversations offline. A media attorney described that as an “enormous problem.”

Councilman Mark Conway said he voted no on the city budget because he could not support public dollars going to an entity without documentation showing how tens of millions of dollars had been managed. Backers of new oversight legislation are pushing for a performance audit by the Baltimore City Comptroller every three years, and the measure now has support from seven council members. City code already requires a yearly BCYF oversight hearing, putting the next test of accountability squarely on City Hall, the council and BCYF’s leadership.