Question 1: What issues have you experienced with Baltimore and the Maryland Public Information Act?

 

Since the start of last year my colleagues and I have filed 20 open records requests in Baltimore: 12 with the city and eight with the school.

 

Two times we were pointed toward info that was already available online. But besides that, the other 18 requests were all either ignored, denied, or sent with so much missing info that they are basically useless.

 

City employees are legally required to acknowledge they’ve received a request 10 days after it’s sent and provide the records 30 days after it was sent. But we’ve had several instances where it takes months of follow up emails and voicemails to get a response, and other instances where a response never comes at all.

 

Question 2: Can you give us some examples of requests that were unsuccessful?

 

Last year we asked the city for info on the 5,600 vehicles in its fleet. We were ignored for months and eventually received a list of 12 cars. We asked for the missing info and were ignored.

 

We also recently asked for the city’s credit card records. We were told we needed to list out which employees’ credit cards we wanted - as if it’s realistic to type out a list of every single employee in Baltimore. 

 

We recently requested the school district’s 2024 payroll. Instead they sent us the 2022 payroll and told us the request was closed. Months later they finally sent us the 2024 payroll but there’s no way to download it and analyze the numbers.

 

Question 3: Why does this matter? What’s the importance of these open records laws?

 

It’s our single most powerful tool for holding the government accountable.

 

Baltimore’s open records process has already prevented our team from reporting on several stories for your station. Peggy Daidakis, the old director of the Baltimore Convention Center, was the highest paid city employee in 2023 even though she retired in 2022. We tried to investigate, but the city won’t send us her contract.

 

We wanted to do a story on David Wilson, the president of Morgan State University. Our records show he earned $1 million in a single year even though his base salary is $600,000. We tried to find out why, but the college ignored our request. 

 

Our organization files records requests with all 50 states and almost every town and city in America. There are plenty that give us trouble, but Baltimore is one of the most extreme examples we’ve seen.