BALTIMORE (WBFF) — A whistleblower at the taxpayer-backed Baltimore Children and Youth Fund (BCYF) said the nonprofit’s leaders advised employees on how to skirt Maryland’s public information law—an allegation described by a media attorney as an "enormous problem.”
The allegation marks the latest in a series of concerns for BCYF over the past year, from whistleblower complaints to an investigation of the nonprofit from the Baltimore City Inspector General to a pending bill at the Baltimore City Council that would update oversight of the fund. BCYF is guaranteed a portion of Baltimore City’s assessed property value each year, leading to about $16 million in taxpayer funding this fiscal year, to fund youth programs in Baltimore City.
Spotlight on Maryland has published a series of investigative reports since 2024 exposing questionable spending at BCYF based on documentation obtained through the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA). A former BCYF employee said that as those requests came in, leadership at the organization advised employees on how to ensure their communications and operations were not made public.
“We received media training—and in the media training we talked about how to best present information without actually presenting information—and as the MPIA requests came in, that became a little bit more layered,” a whistleblower told Spotlight on Maryland. “Those layers looked like having meetings that were put on the calendars with no titles, so that if...
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