A judge just dealt a major blow to Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in his ongoing fight with the city’s Inspector General. Judge Pamela White denied the mayor’s request to dismiss the Inspector General’s lawsuit against him. That means Isabel Cummings, the IG, can continue her push for full access to city records that the mayor’s office has been refusing to turn over. The whole conflict started months ago.
Cummings was investigating a program under the mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement, looking into possible misuse of funds. She said the city’s law department suddenly cut off her access to certain documents in January and even tried to limit her subpoena power. The mayor’s office argued that Cummings should have to follow the same public records rules as any citizen. The judge didn’t buy it.
She sided with the IG, pointing to the city charter that was voted on by the people of Baltimore. That charter gives the Inspector General the explicit right to review these materials. Baltimore attorney Kirk Nobleman called the ruling a crushing loss for the mayor. Taxpayer advocate David Williams called it great news for the city and its taxpayers.
The concern is simple: if an elected official can withhold information from an Inspector General, then the entire oversight process becomes political. Waste, fraud, and abuse could go unnoticed, and nobody would ever be held accountable. But this isn’t the only controversy swirling around the mayor’s office. Investigative reporters spent more than a year digging into how the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund spends millions of taxpayer dollars every year.
What they found involved the mayor’s wife. The fund sends about $16 million in taxpayer money each year to a nonprofit. Since 2022, about $250,000 of that went to a smaller nonprofit called Beadle Speaking, which mentors children through jewelry-making. That money moved through a fiscal sponsor called Be More Empowered.
And that’s where the mayor’s wife comes in. Hana Scott was employed as director of operations for Be More Empowered. Documents obtained through a public records request showed she received $51,000 in taxpayer funds from August 2024 to September 2025. The same month those payments stopped, Be More Empowered announced it was shutting down.
That left serious questions about how the remaining taxpayer money was spent and who would be responsible for disclosing those final assets. Neither Hana Scott nor the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund responded to questions about the payments. So reporters took their concerns directly to Mayor Scott at a press conference. “We obtained documents from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund that showed that your wife was personally paid $50,000 taxpayer dollars through the fund.
Do you think that’s a conflict of interest? ”
The mayor didn’t take it well. “I’m going to say this again, because I’ve addressed this multiple times with this kind of tomfoolery, as my grandfather would say. Attacking this organization simply because my wife used to work there in the position she held before we even met is wrong.
”
The reporter pressed further. “Well, she was paid in 2024 and 2025, though. So, that…”
“I’m going to say this again to you. I’ve said what I said about this, and you have to understand that as a man, maybe one day you will have a wife.
I wish that for you. That I am not going to allow you and the mega-loving folks at your station to tarnish my wife and my family. ”
The mayor never answered how much taxpayer money his wife received. His financial disclosures from 2024 and 2025 list his wife’s employment and income with her consulting firm, but her work with Be More Empowered was not disclosed, even though that organization received roughly $300,000 in city taxpayer dollars in recent years.
The documents didn’t describe what services Hana Scott actually provided for that $51,000. Her salary was never revealed in the nonprofit’s tax forms. Amanda Beck, a professor who specializes in nonprofit accounting and government audits, said there are red flags everywhere. She called it a conflict of interest because taxpayers deserve transparency.
And the timing of the discovery—right around when the nonprofit was shutting down—raises even more concerns. If the nonprofit no longer exists, who’s responsible for disclosing what happened to those final assets? No one is comparing this to massive state-wide scandals. The scale is different.
But for the mayor, the optics are terrible. He fought to keep documents hidden from the Inspector General. His wife received tens of thousands in city money through a nonprofit that has now shut down. And he refuses to directly answer questions about any of it.
The mayor’s administration has real successes to point to, including a drop in violence. Yet he keeps picking fights that taint his administration’s credibility by appearing to hide documents that might reveal misspending or even fraud. Now, all eyes turn to what comes next. The judge has refused to throw out the Inspector General’s case.
The mayor will have to keep fighting or finally cooperate. The question remains: if the documents are handed over, what will they show?
