Ferguson says IG apology ‘not sufficient’ for what Scott administration called racist post

Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson on Thursday morning said it’s not enough that Baltimore’s inspector general apologized for posting an AI-generated image of Mayor Brandon Scott.

The mayor and his team called the post racist earlier this week and sent a complaint to the city’s ethics board.

“An apology is fine for personal redemption. It’s not sufficient professionally under the circumstances,” Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat, wrote in a post on social media site X. “For an office built on impartiality, the choice to publicly post insulting and offensive content to attack a sitting Mayor undermines public trust and the work of an oversight office overall.”

In a two-paragraph statement issued late Wednesday, Isabel Mercedes Cumming said she was sorry for sharing the image which depicted the mayor chomping on a cigar, clutching a glass of brown liquor and holding a fistful of luxury shopping bags in front of a suitcase overflowing with cash. The post, which has since been deleted, included a link to a YouTube video that contained misinformation about the city’s budget.

“A friend send me this very interesting video from YouTube - ties many things together,” Cumming wrote in the post.

On Wednesday, Cumming said the video included a “satirical, AI-generated digital image that I did not notice and do not endorse or support.”

The inspector general said she removed the video from her social media after “receiving feedback.”

“I apologize to Mayor Scott, my dedicated OIG team, and the residents of Baltimore City,” Cumming said. “This post detracted from the important mission of the OIG to investigate waste, financial abuse and fraud. It will not happen again.”

In an interview Wednesday, Scott said he regards the image as an updated version of past racist imagery of Black people.

“Our features are always exaggerated,” he said. “When you see that kind of stuff, you cannot allow it to slide.”

Scott said he believed Cumming was aware the image was AI-generated.

“Anybody that looks at that image knows it was AI,” he said. “You would have to be a blind 90-year-old person to not know that’s AI. Clearly that’s not me.”

Ferguson, in his response to the episode, argued that it illustrated the need for a “thoughtful, purposeful framework for accessing data.”

The General Assembly recently completed its session without acting on a proposal to exempt inspectors general from requirements of the Maryland Public Information Act. Cumming and other inspectors general lobbied for the exemption. The Scott administration has cited the act as justification for barring Cumming’s direct access to records.

“Too often personal vendettas cause people to make bad choices, and good public policy requires systems to be in place to limit the potential damage that can result,” Ferguson said in his social media post.

Scott’s team argues that Cumming’s post is part of a pattern of behavior by the inspector general on social media that has undermined her credibility.

On Tuesday, J.D. Merrill, Scott’s chief of staff, sent a letter to the Baltimore City Board of Ethics and the advisory board that oversees Cumming, calling the post “deeply inappropriate, misleading, damaging, and racist.”

Merrill submitted several other posts by the inspector general with his letter and asked the two boards to review Cumming’s online conduct.

“Promoting this type of content to the public we serve raises serious questions on IG Cumming’s ability to bring fairness and objectivity to the essential work of the OIG,” Merrill wrote.

The clash comes amid an ongoing legal dispute between Scott and Cumming over access to city records.

Cumming sued the administration earlier this year in an attempt to enforce a subpoena for records related to the city’s anti-violence program. The administration previously cut off the direct access to records Cumming had enjoyed during her eight-year tenure.

On Friday, retired Baltimore Circuit Associate Judge Pamela J. White signaled her support of Cumming’s effort, saying during a hearing that the administration was minimizing the authority of Cumming’s office under the city’s charter.