A seventh Baltimore City Council member told The Baltimore Sun Thursday he will likely support a bill to make funding for the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund more transparent. This came just after a conversation between city leaders on Wednesday revealed ongoing divisions over the bill.
Introduced Sept. 29 by Councilmen Mark Parker and John Bullock, Bill 25-0100 would establish new transparency standards for BCYF, which received $16 million from property tax revenues guaranteed by the Baltimore City Charter this year. Under the bill, BCYF would face a performance audit by the City Comptroller every three years, restrict grants to organizations tied to its staff and board, and limit the city’s ability to use its money for government programs.
In a phone interview with The Sun Thursday, District 5 Councilman Isaac “Yitzy” Schleifer said there is a “99% chance” he signs on to support the BCYF transparency bill.
“I am for a lot stronger oversight and reporting related to the fund. And so, if you want to go ahead and say, ‘Do I support that legislation?’ I would say there’s a 99% chance I do, but obviously I want to make sure it goes far enough,” Schleifer said. “…The truth of the matter is, if there is, if it’s going to make [BCYF] more transparent, I’m going to support it, even if it doesn’t go as far as I would like it to go.”
Schleifer’s support would bring the total number of sponsors to seven on the 15-member Baltimore City Council. Besides Bullock and Parker, Councilmen Zac Blanchard, Mark Conway and Ryan Dorsey — as well as City Council President Zeke Cohen — have already sponsored the bill. The remaining eight council members have yet to take a public position on it.
Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott is opposed to the bill because he believes it would limit his office’s ability to use BCYF funds for programs like YouthWorks, which provides summer job opportunities for residents aged 14 to 21.
Conway, a sponsor of the transparency bill and Democratic congressional candidate, has publicly sparred with Scott over BCYF funds for such programs flowing through the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. His spokesman, Luca Amayo, told The Sun he believes Scott opposes the bill because efforts to establish transparency could threaten this funding structure.
“Essentially, what he’s saying is he still wants to see money flow from BCYF into the mayor’s office rather than going into nonprofits that are in the communities — the smaller and medium-sized nonprofits that BCYF was created to support,” Amayo said.
Youth representation
Wednesday’s discussion between BCYF President Alysia Lee and two members of the Baltimore Board of Estimates — Cohen and City Comptroller Bill Henry — focused on the bill’s “Diversity” section. A provision in this section would allow the Board of Estimates to waive the requirement for at least one-third of BCYF board members to be between 14 and 25 years old.
Henry — who was a member of the City Council when BCYF was created in 2016 — argued that eliminating this age quota would give BCYF more flexibility amid struggles to find enough young people to serve on its board.
“I just wanted to take this opportunity to clear up what might be a misunderstanding: [The bill] does not reduce the number of youth seats,” Henry said. “…You can still choose to put the same amount of youth on [the board]. You will simply be exceeding the percentage required by law.”
In response, Lee described the proposal to eliminate the youth seats quota as an “arbitrary standard.” She suggested a future BCYF leader could appoint very few or no young people, compromising the fund’s intended mission.
“I would argue on behalf of young people, they don’t want that. They want to be present on the board, and the [one-third] number is the number that the community chose,” Lee said. “We’d like to maintain that number. And as a director, I think we should [ensure] that one-third of the board is comprised of young people.”
Cohen, a co-sponsor of the council bill, told Lee that “no one on the council is saying no young people” can serve on BCYF’s board. He said the “lapses” in youth membership on BCYF’s board because of the quota were more extensive than Lee implied.
“I think it was several years of lapse, and I think the point of that part of this legislation was to provide support and to say, ‘We’re really serious about getting to this number again,’” Cohen said. “I just don’t think it’s accurate to say there was one year of lapses.”
Agreeing to disagree, Lee concluded the discussion by calling on City Council members to meet with BCYF staff and grantees to address “12 to 15 points of concern” the organization has with the bill.
Have a news tip? Contact Carson Swick at cswick@baltsun.com.
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