A push from Baltimore teachers to put one-time cash payments for new parents into the city’s charter was brought before Maryland’s highest court on Wednesday.
In early July, the city board of elections approved the Baltimore Baby Bonus Fund for November’s ballot with over 14 thousand signatures collected in support. The proposal would give every parent in the city at least $1,000 to spend on anything they need, from strollers to groceries – a move Mayor Brandon Scott and other city officials have pushed back on in court.
The Maryland Child Alliance, a grassroots group of local teachers who created the Baby Bonus, said their goal is to combat child poverty – which affects nearly one-third of Baltimore school-aged children, according to census data.
But on August 9, a circuit court judge ruled in favor of Mayor Scott and the city council to find the Baby Bonus proposal unconstitutional. So the teachers appealed the decision to the state supreme court.
In Wednesday’s hearing, lawyers arguing on their behalf – and on behalf of the city board of elections – said the Baby Bonus meets court precedent for charter amendments. But the lawyer representing local government officials disagreed.
The debate boils down to two previous Maryland cases: one that rejected a proposed amendment in 1980 for being too detailed like legislation, and another in 2012 that shifted a specific function of local government to an independent contractor.
Thomas Chapman, lawyer for the Baltimore board of elections, said these cases leave an “open question” about whether charter amendments can take away some local government control – as long as they don’t take away all of it.
“Our highest interest here, I think, is in having a clear and administrable rule for what counts as proper charter material,” he said.
The final language for November ballot questions has to be drafted by Sept. 6, a state board of elections official said. Two days later, they go to print – which means the court needs to issue a ruling by next Friday.
Baby Bonus supporters contend their measure leaves many details up to the council and mayor to decide, like whether adoptive parents are included in receiving the $1,000 bonus and how those funds will be distributed.
“And these aren't just minor details,” Chapman said. “These are important in the sense that they can affect how well the policy functions.”
Chapman also argued that the Baby Bonus amendment is like the one in the 2012 case, Atkinson v. Anne Arundel County. Under that revised charter, an independent contractor set wages for firefighters and police officers instead of the county council.
“And so the county council's discretion over a portion of its budget was being taken away,” Chapman said. The Baby Bonus does the same, he argues, by mandating a portion of the city’s annual budget go to reducing the effects of child poverty.
But Tom Webb, the lawyer representing city leaders in the Baby Bonus case, said the mandated spending in Atkinson was very different.
“It was targeted toward the relationship between the government and its employees,” he said. “That's fundamentally different from this, which is outward-looking, right? This is a public policy measure.”
Webb also said that the 1980 Cheeks v. Cedlair Corps case, which rejected an amendment that would’ve written rent controls into the local charter, establishes that language “must be broad and it must be general.”
“What we have here is a very specific appropriation, a mandatory appropriation tells the city exactly how much it must appropriate, and it tells the city exactly how it must spend that money,” he said.
Mark Stichel, representing the Maryland Child Alliance, said the group is willing to cut the specified $1,000 minimum from the ballot question language.
He also reminded the state court that funding language in the Baby Bonus is copied and pasted exactly from the Children and Youth Fund, which has been in the city’s charter since 2016.
Chapman said this back-and-forth highlights the need for the Maryland Supreme Court to create a “single sliding scale test” to determine whether charter amendment proposals are viable.
Right now, he said, it’s unclear whether the amount of detail left up to local leaders or the subject matter of the mandated spending is the issue.
“Do they both need to be satisfied? Or can it be one or the other?” Chapman asked.
Webb said there is only one court precedent set by both cases – and the Baby Bonus fails to meet it.
“Once you have too many policy details, once you take away that power from the legislature, it becomes legislative,” he said. “It's no longer constitutional.”
