Profile in Courage: Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming

Photo credit: The Baltimore Sun

What fuels the problems of waste, fraud, and abuse too-often found at all levels of government is the lack of clear market signals. For example, if a company is wasting a lot of money it probably won’t be in business much longer. If employees aren’t doing their job well, it shows up on the company’s bottom-line, allowing management to identify and resolve problems quickly. In government however, if a program or office isn’t performing well, the typical “solution” is often just throwing more money at it. Public employees are notoriously hard to fire and public officials rarely take responsibility. Inspectors General (IG) therefore are a critical tool for not only identifying waste or corruption, but also in deterring such problems from occurring or getting worse.

Baltimore has an extensive history of problems with corruption. Last year, Charm City taxpayers found out that then-Mayor Catherine Pugh was doling out contracts and selling influence to companies and interest groups that would buy her “Healthy Holly” books at inflated prices. The corruption ran deep as money was funneled to businesses that Pugh had a financial interest in and her campaign. Earlier this year, Pugh was sentenced to prison. Pugh’s case is par for the course; the Mayor’s stormy departure was just the latest in a long line of mayoral scandals. Fortunately, Baltimore’s IG office is more than up to the task of holding these wrongdoers accountable. Baltimore IG Isabel Mercedes Cumming has left no stone unturned in rooting out wrongdoing and bringing a semblance of justice to a deeply troubled city. And for going to bat everyday for Baltimore taxpayers, Isabel Mercedes Cumming is truly a Profile in Courage.

From the start of her career, Cumming was determined to hold crooks and cheats responsible for their misdeeds. In 1984, Cumming was hired by KPMG Peat Marwick in Baltimore City to examine and audit the finances of large financial institutions. She recounts, “I started working for KPMG during the Savings & Loan crisis, and I found fraud examining the most interesting part of the job. I truly loved it!… Back in the early 1980s, it was unheard of to have a career fighting fraud.”

This fraud fighting acumen would serve her well during her six-year stint as an Assistant State Prosecutor with the Maryland State Prosecutor’s Office. During that time, she helped take down prominent, corrupt public officials such as former Comptroller Jacqueline McLean, who was hiring and paying sham consultants and research groups and directing city leases toward properties she owned.

Cumming also served as Chief of the Economic Crimes/Special Prosecutions Unit of the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office for more than seven years, and served an additional six years after that as the Assistant Inspector General of Investigations for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA). But even the waste-ridden WMATA system couldn’t prep Cumming for Baltimore, one of the most poorly-run cities in the country.

Days after being chosen as Baltimore’s IG in 2018, Cumming made clear that “nobody is off limits. Overtime situations, theft of time. Purchase cards. There are so many areas that need to be looked at…I love going after white collar criminals.” At the time, then-Mayor Pugh sung her praises, stating Cumming “knows how to operate independently to be fair and just.” Maybe Pugh would not have been so effusive if she knew that Cumming would be actively investigating the Mayor’s Office for fraud. After media reports revealed that then-Mayor Pugh had cozy financial ties to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), the IG’s office began to take a closer look at the city leader’s money dealings.

IG and federal investigations revealed a disturbing pattern: UMMS and other organizations such as health provider Kaiser Permanente were paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for Pugh’s “Healthy Holly” books in order to obtain lucrative contracts from the city. Pugh used the proceeds to buy a second house and illegally funnel money to her 2016 mayoral campaign. Were it not for the tireless work of watchdogs such as the IG, Pugh might still be in the Mayor’s Office instead of federal prison.

Pugh may be behind bars, but that hasn’t stopped Cumming from continuing to hold public officials and contractors responsible for the scandal. A recently released IG report details Baltimore’s shady, longstanding master lease agreement with Columbia-based finance firm Grant Capital Management (GCM). In 2018, the company was awarded a new agreement despite filing a false affidavit claiming they had filed campaign finance disclosures. In reality, GCM never filed the disclosures, which would have revealed thousands of dollars’ worth of “Healthy Holly” book purchases.

Hopefully, the company and its CEO J.P. Grant are quickly brought to justice over these brazen attempts to buy influence. But regardless of whether Pugh’s business partners are held accountable in the court of law, Baltimore City taxpayers can rest easy knowing that the bad guys are always being watched by the Inspector General. And for looking out for a badly broken city, Isabel Mercedes Cumming is truly a Profile in Courage.