Baltimore City Solicitor Ebony Thompson is questioning an order by Circuit Court Judge Pamela J. White instructing her office to produce records subpoenaed by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming.

In a three-page motion disclosed late yesterday, Thompson asks the judge “for clarification or, in the alternative, for reconsideration” of  her August 14 order calling on the law department to turn over records identified and subpoenaed by the inspector general.

The motion ups the ante in the high-stakes battle between the Scott administration and Cumming over the watchdog agency’s independence and legal powers to investigate fraud, waste and abuse in city government.

In a decision last Friday, Judge White rejected the Scott administration’s claims that the OIG’s access to information should be governed by Maryland’s Public Information Act, saying the city’s position conflicted with the broad authority voters granted to the inspector general through two charter amendments.

“OIG is not controlled by and does not answer to any directive from the Mayor, City Council or City Solicitor,” the judge wrote. “Rather, OIG reports directly to Baltimore citizens.”

Backlog of Subpoenas

Cumming and two members of the OIG Advisory Board filed the lawsuit last February.

They argue that the city has interfered with the office’s ability to investigate complaints of potential misconduct by city agencies or officials by restricting access to databases and treating investigative subpoenas as public records requests under the MPIA.

At a meeting of the IG Advisory Board on Tuesday, Cumming said that these restrictions have crippled the agency’s ability to carry out its work.

Out of 67 subpoenas for records the watchdog has issued since February, only four – one of them partially – have been fulfilled by the law department, Cumming told the board.

The city says it is not delaying records retrieval, but instead is fulfilling OIG requests on a “rolling basis.”

This prompted White to order the city on Friday to “promptly identify and produce the entirety of each response to each subpoena” by the OIG.

Out of 67 subpoenas the watchdog has issued since February, only four have been fulfilled by the law department.

Thompson now is asking White for clarification of the scope and timing of the order, asking, for example, what she means by the word “promptly.”

“By ‘promptly,’” does the judge “intend the production required by Paragraph 3 to occur within the same 15-day period established in numbered Paragraph 2 or on some other timetable,” Thompson asked.

She further asks the judge to clarify “what constitutes the ‘entirety of each response,’ specifically, whether that language requires production of all responsive records without withholding or redaction of materials subject to common law, statutory or constitutional limitations on production.”

Echoing prior motions to the court, Thompson recited materials she claims are protected not only by the MPIA, but by:

“the attorney-client privilege or work product doctrine; legislative privilege; whistleblower complaints or information identifying whistleblowers or confidential sources” as well as “other applicable law, including privileged or confidential records, personnel records, medical or psychological information, juvenile records, criminal records and investigatory records.”

In effect, the city is asking the judge to modify or reverse her August 14 order and reconsider the city’s petition to dismiss the lawsuit.

Reached last night, Cumming refused to comment on the motion, but indicated that her office’s pro bono lawyers will file a response shortly.

• NOTE: The Brew has extensively covered the dispute between City Hall and the OIG that began in earnest after the watchdog office started looking at the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. Here are links to our stories.