Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and the city council want to remove a charter amendment proposal that would give at least $1,000 to every new parent from November’s ballot.
On July 1, the Board of Elections gave the green-light for the Baltimore Baby Bonus Fund to appear before voters in the fall. A grassroots group of city teachers called the Maryland Child Alliance created and campaigned for the measure, gathering over 14,000 petition signatures to secure its ballot placement.
“This is already placed on the ballot by the board of elections,” said Nate Golden, one of the Baby Bonus’ creators and a teacher at Forest Park High School. “The mayor is trying to take it off, despite the will of the people.”
The legal challenge filed by the city law department Thursday calls the Baby Bonus “unconstitutional” — saying it violates state and local law by usurping the government’s power to create legislation and revise the yearly budget.
“The Baby Bonus Fund Amendment is legislative in character,” the complaint reads. “[It] would require the City to exercise its legislative authority in a certain way, as to a certain group…Further, because the Baby Bonus Fund Amendment would establish a continuing, non-lapsing fund, to be funded by a mandatory appropriation, it constitutes an exercise of the City Council’s power with respect to the annual budgeting process.”
Golden says the challenge is an “undemocratic power grab.”
In a press conference Friday, he said the proposal received legal pre-approval from the board of elections in March 2023.
And, he said, the Baby Bonus model is “copied and pasted” from the Baltimore Children and Youth Fund — which started as a charter amendment proposal that Mayor Scott approved for the ballot as a city councilman. It passed in 2016.
Golden said Scott has since signed that fund into the budget four times.
“So if he really believed that this was not an acceptable part of the charter, why did he put it in the charter, and then continue to put it in the budget year after year after year — including the most recent budget, which passed just a couple of weeks ago?” he said.
The proposed Baby Bonus is designed to receive the same funding, which allocates three cents for every $100 of the city’s assessed property value, to give direct payments to every parent who gives birth or adopts as a way to combat child poverty.
The city council would ultimately decide the funding and implementation details of the program.
But with an average of 7,000 births per year, the Maryland Child Alliance estimates it would take up less than 1% of the city’s multi-billion-dollar annual budget.
“When you're a teacher, you see the devastating impact of child poverty every single day — especially when you're a teacher in Baltimore City Schools,” Golden said. “And it's mind blowing that our legislators just continue to allow this to exist.”
An emailed statement from the mayor’s office says that the city doesn’t have the resources to sustain a permanent universal payment measure.
“While Mayor Scott is supportive of the proposed amendment’s objectives, charter amendments that effectively commandeer the role of the legislature go against Maryland law and the City’s charter,” the statement says. “We’re advocating for the federal government to look at the success of guaranteed income pilots like ours to make it possible for more Americans.”
But Golden says he’s tired of local leaders punting the responsibility to someone else.
“The state and the federal government aren't doing it,” he said. “So what does that mean for the children of Baltimore? Brandon Scott can't just point a finger and say, ‘Hey, it's that guy's job.’ He is the mayor of the city. He gets to set the budget, and if children are a priority to him, he needs to show it in the budget — not just with his rhetoric.”
Golden said the Maryland Child Alliance has been trying to meet with Scott since they created the Baby Bonus.
“Yesterday was the first time that we were granted a meeting with the mayor,” he said. “And that was for them to inform us that they were filing a lawsuit to remove the Baby Bonus from the ballot.”
Golden said he and the Baby Bonus team will be fighting the legal complaint in Baltimore’s circuit court.
“They know that we can't afford to hire a big-time lawyer and they have the entire city law department at their disposal,” Golden said. But he also says he’s confident the Baby Bonus will win.
Golden said he also filed public information requests for internal government talks about the charter amendment — including a poll Golden claims the mayor conducted that showed the Baby Bonus would likely pass.
