Judge denies Baltimore City’s request to pause OIG subpoena order

BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A Baltimore City judge has denied an emergency attempt by Mayor Brandon Scott’s administration to pause enforcement of a key document production order in the ongoing legal fight between the city and the Inspector General.

The order, entered Wednesday by Senior Judge Pamela White in Baltimore City Circuit Court, comes as the city tries to challenge a previous directive that required it to quickly identify and turn over all responses to certain Inspector General subpoenas issued to city agencies since April.

The city’s legal team had asked the court to delay that requirement while it seeks an expedited appeal, arguing the order functions as a preliminary injunction and is immediately appealable.

WBFF has been following this dispute, which centers on whether the Inspector General can compel the city to produce potentially privileged or confidential records.

White’s order from Aug. 14 directed the city to respond to subpoenas and produce required documents, rejecting the city’s claim that Maryland’s Public Information Act prevents such disclosures.

White wrote that the Inspector General’s legal power to issue and enforce subpoenas “is not in conflict with or restricted by the MPIA,” and that city arguments about applying MPIA exclusions were “inapt.”

ALSO READ | Baltimore City wants higher court to weigh in on escalating OIG fight

According to the city’s filing, complying with the order could involve producing more than one terabyte of data and more than two million pages of emails.

City attorneys warned that some of that data could include confidential or privileged material, saying that “disclosure could not later be undone.”

The city also argued that production was ordered “without resolving core questions raised in the litigation” and before the city had “an opportunity for a full adversary hearing.”

The city’s statement defending its position said, “The City maintains that defending our position in this litigation is necessary, not to prevent legitimate oversight, but to protect the privacy rights of residents and uphold bedrock principles of American jurisprudence, including the protection of attorney-client communication.” It further claimed, “Not only has Judge White not issued a final ruling on the applicability of the MPIA, the appeal is necessary because the Judge’s recent order orders production without resolving core questions raised in the litigation,” the City Law Department said.

Mayor Scott’s administration claimed that the Inspector General’s subpoenas sometimes “equate to millions of pages of documents across numerous agencies, many without any defined investigatory scope.” They said the requests included whole email boxes “without any parameters to exclude anything at all, even clearly irrelevant emails like newsletters and mass mailings.” The statement from the City Law Department argued, “Overly broad requests and malicious use of subpoenas routinely get thrown out or narrowed by courts at every level because they constitute an abuse of process.”

The city said it is using in-house lawyers for the case and challenged the Inspector General’s resource use, saying, “The OIG should answer for how their approach to their work is a good use of resources, including the IG’s own time.” White, however, wrote that the Inspector General “cannot be limited to acting as a supplicant for information potentially deemed ‘privileged’ by or for another government unit.”

The hearing on the Inspector General’s summary judgment motion is now set for Sept. 16 at 10 a.m., where arguments on the broader dispute will continue.