By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
Two Maryland governments got caught this year restricting the very people whose job is to catch them wasting money. Now a Republican running for the House of Delegates wants voters to notice.
Fitzgerald Mofor, one of two GOP nominees for the two-member seat in District 9A, is making the case that local inspectors general in Maryland are being stonewalled by the same officials they’re supposed to hold accountable, and that Annapolis has had the chance to fix it and hasn’t. His argument got two fresh pieces of evidence this week: a Howard County watchdog still locked out of records nine months into the job, and a Baltimore City watchdog who just won a court order forcing the mayor’s office to hand hers over.
“Taxpayers deserve legislation that will enhance both local and statewide offices of the Inspector General,” Mofor wrote in a post on X.
The argument
Mofor’s case is simple: if a government hires an inspector general to root out fraud, waste and abuse, that government shouldn’t also get to decide which records the inspector general is allowed to see. Letting an agency pick and choose what its own watchdog can examine defeats the purpose of having a watchdog at all. Mofor says that if elected, he would push for a statewide Office of the Inspector General and a Public Information Act amendment guaranteeing local IGs access to records their own enabling laws already say they can demand.
That argument doesn’t rest on Mofor’s word alone. Two of Maryland’s own inspectors general are living it right now.
“If a government hires an inspector general to root out fraud, waste and abuse, that government shouldn’t also get to decide which records the inspector general is allowed to see.”
Howard County: still locked out, nine months in
Kelly Madigan, Howard County’s first inspector general, told the County Council on Monday that her office has fielded more than 97 complaints since she took the job, with 15 still open and 14 active. She has a permanent office and a deputy now. What she still doesn’t have is real access to the county’s own records systems.
Madigan told the council her investigators sometimes have to ask the very county employees under investigation, or their colleagues, to pull records on their behalf.
“It can be awkward to ask someone else … to pull documents on your behalf,” Madigan said.
The county’s law office is leaning on Montgomery County v. Shropshire, a 2011 Maryland high court ruling that found police internal-affairs records tied to alleged rule violations by two officers counted as personnel records and couldn’t be handed to that county’s inspector general. It’s a narrow, 15-year-old case about two cops and one accident report, and Howard County’s lawyers are using it to keep Madigan out of roughly 40 categories of records. Madigan floated making her office a co-custodian of records; the county solicitor said that raises complications of its own. Her real hope is a legislative fix when the General Assembly reconvenes in January, and she’s not confident county leadership will make that easy. County Councilman David Yungmann, the council’s only Republican, said he worries the issue could get lost in the shuffle once a new county executive takes office later this year.
“It can be awkward to ask someone else … to pull documents on your behalf.”
— Kelly Madigan, Howard County Inspector General
Baltimore: the mayor’s office fought this all the way to a courtroom loss
Baltimore City Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming’s version of this fight went further, because Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration didn’t just slow-walk her; it fought her in court and lost.
Cumming’s office had been investigating SideStep, a now-defunct youth diversion program run out of the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Investigators found the city had spent more than $694,000 on 15 contractors for the program, with invoices from at least two of them turning out to be fraudulent. When Cumming’s office subpoenaed the underlying MONSE records, the city’s law department handed back more than 200 pages with most of the material blacked out, citing the same public-records law Howard County is now using against Madigan.
Cumming sued to enforce her subpoena rather than accept the redactions. On Aug. 14, Circuit Judge Pamela White denied the city’s motion to dismiss the case and rejected the city’s broad reading of Shropshire, calling it narrower than the city claimed. The city asked an appellate court to pause the case while it pursued an appeal; a majority of a three-judge panel said no on Monday, finding White’s order wasn’t the kind that could be appealed yet.
That set up Wednesday’s hearing, and the city lost again, decisively. White granted Cumming’s motion for summary judgment outright, ordering the city to restore her office’s access to its computer systems and respond to outstanding subpoenas, including records tied to 36 city employees that had been sitting unanswered for months. White said the cutoff had “brought the independent work of the OIG to a crashing halt.” The city can still withhold genuinely privileged material, but only if it documents each withheld record in a privilege log rather than making blanket claims, and White was openly skeptical of the city’s attempt to stretch attorney-client privilege to cover lawyers working outside the Law Department.
White said the cutoff had “brought the independent work of the OIG to a crashing halt.”
“This is a win for transparency for all of Baltimore,” said Anthony May, one of Cumming’s pro bono attorneys.
“This is a win for transparency for all of Baltimore.”
— Anthony May, attorney for the Baltimore OIG
“I’ve been the inspector general for eight years, this is a first,” Cumming said of the city’s decision to cut off cooperation with her office in the first place.
City Councilman Mark Conway, who attended the hearing, said the ruling gives him momentum to push a City Charter amendment, by council vote or ballot petition, spelling out the OIG’s records access so it’s no longer up for legal debate. The city hasn’t said whether it will appeal.
“I’ve been the inspector general for eight years, this is a first.”
— Isabel Mercedes Cumming
Annapolis had the chance to settle this and didn’t
None of this had to reach a courtroom. In February, four local inspectors general, including Cumming and Madigan, sent Annapolis a joint statement warning that a new Attorney General’s office advice letter could gut their ability to do their jobs, and asked lawmakers to write a records-access carve-out into law. Bills addressing the problem were introduced in the General Assembly, including one aimed squarely at Howard County’s situation. All of them died without a floor vote:
- SB 991 and its House cross-file, HB 1620, would have required custodians to give inspectors general access to records they’re already legally authorized to demand. A near-identical bill, HB 1624, was filed separately. All three stalled after a first reading.
- The Howard County delegation introduced its own bill, HB 1627, to specifically guarantee Madigan’s office access. It also died after a first reading, which Madigan later said was partly because it was filed too late in the session to gain traction.
- Three competing bills to create a single statewide Office of the Inspector General stalled after March committee hearings without a vote.
- Gov. Wes Moore has shown no appetite for a standalone statewide watchdog, telling reporters in January that Maryland already has “mechanisms all throughout state government” to catch waste and abuse, without engaging with why local inspectors general were sounding the alarm at the same time.
Every one of those bills, including the ones written by Democrats, died in committee. It wasn’t only Republicans asking for this fix, which makes the General Assembly’s inaction harder to write off as partisan gridlock and easier to read as institutional indifference.
“It wasn’t only Republicans asking for this fix.”
Mofor and fellow Republican Spencer Rhoda both won the GOP primary in June for the two Republican nominations in District 9A, which covers parts of Howard and Montgomery counties. They face Democratic incumbents Chao Wu and Natalie Ziegler in November.
What to Watch
- Whether the records-access bill or a statewide OIG bill finally gets a floor vote when the General Assembly reconvenes in January 2027, now that a judge has sided with the inspector general Annapolis failed to protect.
- Whether Howard County actually fixes Madigan’s access, or lets the issue drift through a change in county executive. Vanessa Atterbeary won the Democratic nomination to succeed term-limited Calvin Ball; no Republican filed, though Green Party candidate Nater Kane is also on the ballot.
- Whether Baltimore City appeals Wednesday’s ruling, and whether its privilege-log disclosures hold up to scrutiny once Cumming’s office starts reviewing them.
- Councilman Mark Conway’s push to write OIG records access directly into the Baltimore City Charter.
Sources: Dennis Valera, “Howard County’s inspector general says she’s still having trouble accessing records,” CBS News Baltimore/WJZ, Sept. 14, 2026; joint statement from Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, Inspector General Megan Davey Limarzi, Deputy Inspector General Steve Quisenberry and Inspector General Kelly Madigan on the OAG advice letter regarding the Maryland Public Information Act, February 2026; Montgomery County v. Shropshire, Maryland Court of Appeals, June 29, 2011; The Baltimore Banner, “Baltimore IG refers fraud, data breach in MONSE program for investigation,” March 17, 2026; Baltimore Brew, “Judge rules in favor of Baltimore’s inspector general, denies city’s motion to dismiss,” Aug. 14, 2026; WMAR-2 News, “Baltimore Inspector General sues Mayor for allegedly shielding subpoenaed MONSE records,” Feb. 25, 2026; CBS News Baltimore, “Baltimore watchdog uncovers thousands in fraudulent billing, confidential data breach related to youth crimefighting program,” March 18, 2026; Fox45/WBFF, “Maryland appellate court denies Baltimore’s bid to pause Inspector General records case,” “Judge denies Baltimore City’s bid to clarify order in OIG legal fight,” and “Judge orders Mayor Scott to restore inspector general’s record access and answer subpoenas,” Sept. 16, 2026; The Baltimore Sun, “Baltimore judge orders city to turn over some records sought by inspector general,” Sept. 16, 2026; Maryland General Assembly bill files for SB 991, HB 1620, HB 1624, HB 1627, HB 1085, HB 1064 and HB 1449, 2026 regular session; Biz Monthly, “Insufficient record access throttles Howard IG’s momentum,” July 2026; Spotlight on Maryland/Baltimore Sun, reporting on Gov. Wes Moore’s comments on a statewide inspector general, Jan. 16, 2026; Maryland State Board of Elections, 2026 primary and general election candidate lists for House of Delegates District 9A and Howard County executive; Fitzgerald Mofor, post on X, Sept. 15, 2026.
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