Ousted planning chair sues, claims Braveboy dangled jobs to force resignation

Darryl Barnes, the embattled former chair of the Prince George’s County Planning Board, claimed in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that he was forced to resign after publicly opposing the County Council.

County Executive Aisha Braveboy appointed Barnes chair of the county’s planning board in July 2025. By virtue of that role, he also served as chair of a bicounty parks and planning commission that oversees those programs and operations in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.

Barnes, a former delegate and chair of the body’s Black Caucus, said in the complaint that he publicly opposed the County Council’s decision to funnel public funds from the Maryland- National Capital Park and Planning Commission to “recipients of its choosing without guidelines, competitive process, or documented need.” (The commission is currently suing the county over the transfer of those funds.)

Then, Barnes claims, Braveboy launched a pressure campaign in May that included calls from her deputy chief of staff and prominent lobbyists, as well as offers of “prominent positions with no reduction in salary” in exchange for his resignation from the board. The lawsuit says Barnes’ annual salary was $271,732.

Braveboy’s spokesperson, Brian Fischer, declined to comment on the pending lawsuit.

Specifically, Barnes said he received phone calls from Michael Arrington, a lobbyist for the Sphere Entertainment Group, who he calls “a key advisor to Braveboy,” as well as Gerard Evans, a lobbyist for the county and the council.

Barnes ultimately resigned in May, one day after The Banner reported on a complaint that accused him of abusing his position and threatening an employee who raised legal and ethical concerns about his conduct.

The employee, the commission’s general counsel Debra Borden, filed a complaint accusing Barnes of pressuring the bicounty commission to hire his sister, promoting members of his business network, asking the commission to purchase box seats at Capital One Arena, asking the body to cover his social club dues and assigning police officers as his driver and bodyguard.

Through an attorney, Barnes previously denied those allegations and disputed the “accuracy, completeness, and characterization” of the accounts in the complaint.

In his lawsuit, Barnes said after he stepped down, he “cooperated fully and without condition in an outside investigation.”

But he claims, “no tribunal, investigator, or governmental body has issued any finding of wrongdoing against him.”

The outside investigation, according to Barnes’ lawsuit, began in March and was conducted by the firm Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough. He said the investigation was still ongoing when he resigned and asserts that “to date, no finding of wrongdoing has been issued” against him. Barnes told The Banner on Wednesday that, to his knowledge, the investigation has not been completed.

He said he holds no ill will toward Borden and believes that if given the chance to work together, the two would have worked out their differences.

“My heartburn is with the County Council and county executive,” he said. “People who I thought were my friends — for them to turn their backs and do what they did to me doesn’t show any type of friendship or loyalty."

Barnes’ suit claims that Braveboy and County Council Chair Krystal Oriadha, both of whom are named defendants, spread falsehoods about him. He’s accusing them of defamation, false light invasion of privacy, wrongful forced termination, due process violations and viewpoint retaliation, among other counts.

Specifically, Barnes cited Oriadha’s quote in a Banner article, where she said Barnes was allegedly doing “illegal” and “fraudulent” things.

“We weren’t the ones under investigation,” Oriadha told The Banner. “We weren’t the ones, you know, doing things unethical. The former chairman was.”

Barnes is asking a judge to award him as much as $800,000 in damages, not including compensatory and nominal damages that would have to be proven at trial. He’s also seeking for the court to direct Oriadha and Braveboy to retract or correct their “false and stigmatizing public statements” and grant him a name-clearing hearing.

“When I was asked to resign, we tried to work out a settlement early on with Aisha Braveboy and her team,” Barnes said. “They rejected any type of settlement. This is something we did not want to do, but to be forced to resign and humiliated the way that I was, we had no choice but to do what we’re doing now.”