Baltimore City revokes Inspector General’s access to Law Department files after privilege breach discovery

Access removed after audit finds an unauthorized OIG-linked account inside Law Department files

Baltimore City officials have curtailed the Office of the Inspector General’s access to the City Law Department’s digital records after the city’s technology office identified what the administration described as an unauthorized entry into confidential legal files.

The action followed a permissions audit initiated when a Law Department attorney discovered an account that should not have been present had access to the attorney’s files, including materials treated as protected by attorney-client privilege and attorney work-product doctrine. City officials said the audit found an account associated with the Inspector General’s Office had obtained broad access to those files without approval. The city’s information technology office then removed access and restored file restrictions.

City cites ethical duties tied to attorney-client confidentiality

The mayor’s administration framed the move as necessary to protect privileged communications and comply with professional obligations governing lawyers. City officials said the Inspector General’s Office did not have authorization to access privileged Law Department records for any current investigation and argued that eliminating the access would not interfere with lawful oversight work.

The dispute places two core municipal functions in tension: the Law Department’s duty to safeguard confidential legal communications and litigation strategy, and the Inspector General’s mandate to investigate fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement across city government.

Long-running friction over what records the Inspector General can obtain

In Baltimore, the Office of the Inspector General operates as an independent watchdog, a structure established after the office was moved out of the Law Department and made independent through city legislative action and voter approval in 2018. Under the city charter, the Inspector General has authority to issue subpoenas for testimony and for the production of records and may seek enforcement of subpoenas in court.

Separately, the Inspector General’s Office has publicly argued that it needs direct and complete access to city records to carry out its investigative responsibilities and maintain independence, including in situations where oversight is delayed by record-production disputes.

• The Law Department’s position emphasizes protecting privileged communications and work product.
• The Inspector General’s position emphasizes full access to records needed to complete investigations without interference.

Recent investigative context includes Slack-records dispute

The access controversy follows broader disagreements over document production tied to an Inspector General review involving the Mayor’s Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement and the use of the messaging platform Slack. In that matter, the Inspector General obtained messages through a subpoena, while the Law Department made redactions and treated the request as governed by Maryland’s public records framework, raising questions about the proper standard for withholding or producing material during an active oversight inquiry.

The current conflict centers on whether privileged legal materials should ever be reachable through internal access pathways used for oversight work, or only produced through case-specific processes that screen out privileged content.

What happens next

City officials have indicated that the Inspector General retains investigative tools to seek records relevant to inquiries, including from the Law Department, to the extent those records are not protected by privilege. The key unresolved issue is how the city will define—and operationalize—boundaries between protected legal files and materials the Inspector General contends are necessary for effective oversight.