Emily Opilo

6 days ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Emily Opilo

It was a Sunday at 9 p.m., but no one was resting. “For this budget to move forward tomorrow, I’m gonna need a call from the mayor,” Council President Zeke Cohen abruptly texted Chief of Staff Calvin Young. The text came mere hours before the City Council was scheduled to take a vote on Mayor Brandon Scott’s $4.6 billion spending plan. One day earlier, a tentative agreement had been hammered out between parties, but things were shifting. Cohen’s hardball was perhaps predictable.

1 week ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Emily Opilo

The Baltimore City Council approved Mayor Brandon Scott’s $4.6 billion spending plan with $7 million worth of amendments Monday, but with no rollbacks on fine and fee increases, a centerpiece of Council President Zeke Cohen’s agenda. The 13-2 vote, one of only two budget votes that have not been unanimous since Scott took office in 2020, came after a series of spirited budget hearings and weeks of heated negotiations.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Emily Opilo

Baltimore’s spending board retroactively approved several travel requests for city State’s Attorney Ivan Bates Wednesday, trips Bates submitted after The Baltimore Banner revealed that half of his travel since taking office had not been properly reviewed. The trips, one to Fort Lauderdale in 2025 and two to Chicago in 2023 and 2024, were approved by 4-0 votes of the spending board, with an abstention from Comptroller Bill Henry. All were part of the board’s routine agenda and were not discussed.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Hallie Miller |Emily Opilo |Greg Morton

In April,on a mostly vacant block in East Baltimore, a small crowd gathered to celebrate 21 badly blighted rowhomes being converted into a mix of for-sale housing and off-street parking lots. More than a month later, the shovels have yet to hit the ground on Mura Steet, the compact block in Johnston Square where a handful of homeowners and renters await their long-promised next chapter. ReBUILD Metro, the developer leading the neighborhood’s transformation, is still waiting for its permits.

3 weeks ago | thebaltimorebanner.com | Emily Opilo

Councilwoman Odette Ramos stopped Catalina Rodriguez-Lima mid-thought. “I just want to make sure the public understands what you just said,” the city’s first Latina councilwoman probed. “People are planning on family separation.”Rodriguez-Lima, who heads the city’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, had just finished explaining an initiative to get proper guardianship paperwork in the hands of immigrant children in anticipation of their parents being detained or deported.