By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Mayor Brandon Scott and City Council President Zeke Cohen announced legislation Monday to create a new Department of Neighborhood Safety, folding the city’s embattled Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, known as MONSE, into a permanent agency they’re calling a third branch of public safety alongside police and fire.
The rollout landed in the middle of a rough stretch for the office it’s built around. Hours before the announcement, Maryland’s Appellate Court rejected the Scott administration’s bid to pause a lawsuit over MONSE records. Four days before that, Cohen removed the council member who had led the chamber’s only oversight hearing into MONSE’s problems. And the fallout from a March fraud finding involving one of MONSE’s own programs is still unresolved.
What the plan would do
The department would absorb MONSE, including its Group Violence Reduction Strategy, and build out teams of social workers and peer specialists, people without professional licenses but with relevant life experience, to respond to 911 calls that don’t involve weapons or an unsafe scene. City officials estimate roughly 22,000 calls a year could go to civilian responders instead of police; about a third involve homeless residents. The model comes from Durham, North Carolina, which diverts about 5% of its 911 volume from police, compared with roughly 1.5% in Baltimore today.
The push is partly a legal obligation. Baltimore’s federal consent decree, imposed after Freddie Gray died in 2015 from injuries suffered in police custody, requires a 24-hour civilian alternative-response system. The police department’s own Crisis Response Team has struggled to meet that bar; as of March, it consisted of three officers, a sergeant and a lieutenant working a single midday shift.
Money is where the proposal is thinnest. Pressed by reporters Monday on the total cost, Scott acknowledged the obvious, saying flatly that standing up a new agency would “involve city funds.” The administration has identified roughly $16.8 million in city and federal funding tied to pieces of the effort:
- $12.4 million to replace the city’s aging 911 computer-aided dispatch system
- $3.4 million from the Opioid Restitution Fund for initial planning
- $1 million in federal funding to expand alternative-response capacity
The dispatch project is also getting another $8 million in state funding on top of that, money that’s separate from the $16.8 million above. None of it adds up to a long-term operating budget or a staffing plan, both of which remain undetermined. MONSE Director Stefanie Mavronis would stay on and report to a new executive director, to be found through a national search. Cohen was scheduled to formally introduce the bill later Monday, with a council vote targeted for late October.
“None of it adds up to a long-term operating budget or a staffing plan, both of which remain undetermined.”
Asked directly whether the legislation includes specific financial controls to prevent a repeat of MONSE’s problems, Cohen didn’t name one, instead arguing that turning the operation into a formal, public agency would itself create more room for scrutiny and accountability. David Williams of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance called the current proposal “bare bones” and said the accountability questions should be answered before the council votes.
The fraud finding driving the scrutiny
In March, Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming released findings on MONSE’s now-defunct SideStep youth diversion program. Her office found that invoices from at least two community-based organizations working with SideStep had been altered or were unsupported by any documentation, and concluded that evidence supports that several invoices “amount to thousands of dollars” in fraud. The city had paid roughly $694,800 to SideStep contractors overall since the program launched; the fraud finding covers a portion of that, not the whole sum. Cumming referred the matter to law enforcement for a criminal investigation.
The same report disclosed a separate data breach: a MONSE employee sent a spreadsheet containing roughly 701 names, many belonging to juveniles, along with dates of birth and charges, to a relative’s personal email account. That finding was also referred to law enforcement. MONSE’s official response said the agency was “gravely concerned” but complained the OIG hadn’t given it enough detail to investigate on its own.
“The fraud finding covers a portion of that, not the whole sum.”
Scott has separately commissioned an outside review of SideStep led by Karl Racine, a former D.C. attorney general now with the firm Hogan Lovells, working alongside the accounting firm Baker Tilly. He confirmed Monday that review will continue even as MONSE is folded into the new department, though he gave no completion date.
There’s an ironic postscript. MONSE’s special legal authority to access juvenile records lapsed on Oct. 1, 2025, and the city spent this year lobbying to get it back. Gov. Wes Moore signed that authority into law in May, restoring MONSE’s juvenile-record access, along with two newer mayoral offices, effective this Oct. 1, the same category of sensitive juvenile information implicated in the breach. Bates’s office formally opposed the bill, telling lawmakers in written testimony that the SideStep breach was itself a reason to deny MONSE that access rather than restore it.
“The city spent this year lobbying to get back access to the same category of sensitive juvenile information implicated in the breach.”
A records fight the city keeps losing
Separately, Cumming has been suing the Scott administration since February over access to MONSE’s own financial and payroll records, after the city began treating her subpoenas like routine public records requests and returned redacted documents. In mid-August, retired Circuit Court Judge Pamela White, assigned to hear the case, denied the city’s motion to dismiss it outright, ruled that state public records law doesn’t limit the inspector general’s subpoena authority, and ordered the city to start producing the records. The city sought reconsideration; White rejected that Aug. 24.
The city then asked Maryland’s Appellate Court to pause the case while it pursued an appeal. On Monday, the appellate court said no. Writing for the panel, Judge Kevin F. Arthur found the city hadn’t shown it would suffer irreparable harm by turning over records that go only to the inspector general’s office, which is bound by confidentiality rules of its own. White’s August order stands, and the underlying case returns to her courtroom Wednesday.
A council shake-up days before the rollout
The council member who led the chamber’s April MONSE oversight hearing won’t be running point on this bill. Councilman Mark Conway, then chairman of the Public Safety Committee, convened an April 28 hearing specifically to examine MONSE’s financial controls, data tracking and handling of juvenile information in light of the inspector general’s findings. In May, he introduced a charter amendment that would have written the inspector general’s access to city records into city law. When he tried to force it onto the floor, the council voted 13-1 to keep it in committee, one member absent, ending its chance of reaching voters that year.
On Sept. 10, four days before the new department was unveiled, Cohen removed Conway as Public Safety chairman and replaced him with Councilman John Bullock. Conway called it retaliation for his support of Cumming. Asked directly Monday whether the timing was connected to the new department, Cohen said “no,” telling reporters the move had nothing to do with the inspector general, the mayor or the new department, and was instead about Conway’s own attendance record and legislative history as chairman. Conway shot back that Cohen was “killing the bill” on inspector-general access. State’s Attorney Ivan Bates, who has his own history with MONSE, publicly praised Conway’s committee work days after the removal.
“The council member who led the chamber’s April MONSE oversight hearing won’t be running point on this bill.”
Bates’s own break with MONSE, announced in December, was narrower than it’s sometimes described. He ended his office’s direct coordination with MONSE on the Group Violence Reduction Strategy and turned down $80,000 MONSE had set aside for that work, telling the mayor’s office MONSE operated behind a “cloak of secrecy.” But his office said at the time it would keep prosecuting cases brought by Baltimore Police, including ones designated as GVRS matters, as required by law.
What to Watch
- What Judge White does at Wednesday’s hearing, now that the appellate court has cleared the way for the case to proceed.
- Whether Cohen’s bill picks up specific audit or financial-control language before the council votes, something Cohen didn’t point to when asked directly.
- The outcome of the Racine/Baker Tilly review of SideStep, which Scott confirmed Monday will continue regardless of the reorganization, though he gave no completion date.
- Whether the council’s new Public Safety chairman, Bullock, keeps up the oversight pace Conway had set, or whether that scrutiny fades with the leadership change.
- Whether Bates’s office resumes direct coordination with the renamed department.
Sources: This story draws on Baltimore Banner reporting by Emily Opilo (Sept. 14, 2026) on the new department proposal and by Opilo and Jasmine Vaughn-Hall (Sept. 10, 2026) on Conway’s removal; Fox45/WBFF’s Mikenzie Frost (Sept. 14, 2026) for the funding breakdown, Cohen and Scott’s on-record quotes, and confirmation of the joint announcement; Baltimore Brew’s Fern Shen (March 17, 2026) for the original SideStep fraud and data-breach findings and (July 10, 2026) on the Racine/Baker Tilly review, and Mark Reutter’s live coverage (Sept. 14, 2026) of the Appellate Court ruling, his May 11, 2026 report on the council’s 13-1 vote, and his earlier reporting (Feb. 24 and April 17, 2026) on the underlying lawsuit; the Maryland General Assembly’s official record for SB 524 / Chapter 733, including the State’s Attorney’s Office’s written testimony opposing the bill; and CBS News Baltimore’s reporting on the Bates-MONSE split. MDBayNews independently reviewed the Baltimore City Council’s Legistar record for the April 28, 2026 Public Safety Committee hearing and confirmed Judge Pamela White’s retired status through Maryland court biographical records before publication.
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