When a group called PEACE began circulating petitions to impose term limits on City Hall, the idea didn’t seem too far-fetched. Other elected officials, even Mayor Brandon Scott, had previously expressed support for term limits.
David Smith, the billionaire Baltimore County media mogul who finances PEACE, would later say the 2022 effort was “a test,” an opportunity to see how easy it is to change city government.
It worked.
Two years later, City Council members are fighting for their political lives. People for Elected Accountability and Civic Engagement, the group Smith funds, has a new proposal on the ballot this fall, one to drastically cut the size of the council from 14 districts to eight, leaving six politicians looking for new jobs after the next election cycle.
For Scott and a cohort of City Council members, their enemy is clear. The group has sunk $30,000 into an opposition campaign, “Stop Sinclair,” named after the television company Smith’s family founded.
While Smith may say he wants to see a safer, better-run Baltimore, Scott argued in an interview that the billionaire’s political efforts are about returning control of majority-Black Baltimore to a group of wealthy white men.
“This is about: Can they go back to the old days?” the mayor said. “This is about power.”
The causes behind these ballot measures have become fixtures in the coverage of both WBFF Fox45, Sinclair’s Baltimore flagship, and, recently, The Baltimore Sun.
In an op-ed published in The Sun last month, Smith said he isn’t backing the PEACE measure out of some desire to “consolidate political power” and accused the mayor of lying about Sinclair’s involvement as part of his campaign to protect the status quo in City Hall.
“Is it so hard to believe that the mayor is simply motivated by his desire to retain his political power?” Smith wrote.
Efforts to reach Smith were unsuccessful.
Whatever the case, the reality is that getting a charter amendment on voters’ ballots is not all that expensive. Smith, the sole funder behind PEACE’s City Council measure, has spent $415,000 on the cause this cycle — about the cost of a Fells Point rowhome with a rooftop deck overlooking the harbor.
“The idea that one person can just spend that amount of money without a second thought — the money itself is not an issue for him,” said Mileah Kromer, director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Institute of Politics.
Not only are ballot measure efforts relatively cheap compared to electoral politics — Smith and associates together pumped more than $1 million into a Super PAC in an unsuccessful effort to defeat Scott in May’s Democratic primary — they’re effective.
Going back to 1999, there have been 147 ballot initiatives put to voters. Only one, a 2004 effort to lower the age requirement for joining the City Council, has been rejected.
“At its core, this process is used for citizens to petition our government to put something on the ballot,” Kromer said. “But in today’s day and age, he’s figured out a way to use it. With enough money, enough canvassers, it’s really not that hard.”
Smith is using the charter amendment process as a powerful lever to accomplish his goals in Baltimore. In addition to term limits and shrinking the City Council, PEACE has previously floated a proposal to institute recall elections but did not collect the required number of signatures to get it on the ballot.
These efforts represent just one part of Smith’s apparently growing interest in the affairs of his hometown. Already the executive chairman of Sinclair, Smith personally purchased The Baltimore Sun in January, bringing the 187-year-old newspaper under his control and expanding his influence over the city’s media.
Cutting down the City Council isn’t a “whim” for Smith, said former council member Carl Stokes. Though Stokes said he doesn’t feel strongly about the size of the City Council, he considers himself friendly with Smith and the two have had infrequent conversations about political goals.
“I think he’s thought about this for many years,” Stokes said. Reducing the City Council’s membership is one idea among many Smith believes would make Baltimore run more efficiently, he said.
“He doesn’t think he can get them all done at one time.”
For PEACE Chairman Jovani Patterson, the focus on Smith’s involvement in the ballot initiative effort is frustrating, a distraction from what Patterson says are the actual issues at hand — the efficiency of city government. A past Republican candidate for council president, Patterson argued that the council today is bloated after decades of population decline in Baltimore. Much of the more than $9 million budgeted for the council’s operations could go toward other needs, like improving public safety or schools, he said.
“Who doesn’t want a thriving city? Who doesn’t want to root out corruption in City Hall?” asked Patterson. “Who doesn’t want those things?”
Rare is the elected official who is pro-corruption, anti-thriving city. For the current crop of council members, the worry is a reduction in their ranks could lead to a similar reduction in representation for residents.
Councilman Zeke Cohen won the Democratic primary to become the next council president and would likely oversee the body in the wake of the Smith-backed measure, as members jockeyed with one another for their jobs.
For Cohen, who chipped in $5,000 dollars from his campaign account to the Stop Sinclair campaign, a smaller City Council won’t lead to better services, lower crime or the effects PEACE has cited. Instead, Cohen argued that cutting the council in half will mean residents end up with half the city services.
“I knocked thousands of doors across the city of Baltimore and heard many concerns about city government. I never once heard anyone say they want less representation,” the East Baltimore councilman said.
Residents often come to their councilperson for all manner of things, from crime to permitting or neighborhood disputes. Councilwoman Phylicia Porter recently was called to a constituent’s house and picked up a dead rat — the person was too squeamish to touch it, she said.
On a recent day in Pigtown, a woman walked up to Porter to complain about loose dogs running rampant on her block on Lombard Street. The woman didn’t even live in Porter’s district, but she recognized the councilwoman and thought she could help. Porter listened patiently, gave the woman her cellphone number and told her to call and they would figure out what could be done.
It’s interactions like that one that could suffer if there are fewer council members, said Porter, who also transferred $5,000 from her campaign to Stop Sinclair.
“A lot of issues — you just saw one — start with your local representative,” she said. “What would things look like if you couldn’t just call your councilperson?”
