After decades of proposals to restructure Baltimore’s Board of Estimates, Mayor Brandon Scott suggested Wednesday that the board could be eliminated altogether.

“I think that we should consider eliminating the Board of Estimates because most cities don’t have them,” Scott told The Baltimore Sun. “We have to look at reforming city government in its totality, understanding what the executive’s roles are, what its legislative’s roles are, and making sure that we’re operating in the 21st century government.”

Scott’s office did not respond later when asked for clarification on what this would mean for future spending decisions.

The suggestion comes after 30 years of failed charter amendments to restructure the board. Those proposals would have weakened the mayor’s power over city spending by removing his two appointees from the board, who traditionally vote with the mayor. This would have increased the decision-making power of the other two board members — the city council president and comptroller.

“Having those additional votes, right out of the gate, that are loyal to the mayor, stacks the deck towards the mayor,” said Roger Hartley, dean of the College of Public Affairs at the University of Baltimore. “Some of us probably feel that it’s time to at least ensure that there’s still that representation in the mayor’s office, but it might balance out a little bit with the council president and the comptroller.”

Scott himself proposed a measure to restructure the spending board while serving as council president in 2020, saying the measure would create a government structure “less prone to corruption, more efficient, and more supportive of our local communities.” Following his election in the mayoral Democratic primary months later, he said there were complications restructuring the board and postponed the vote. The vote never occurred.

Asked about his previous support for the measure, Scott told The Sun, “For me, it has never been just about giving power to anybody. It’s about modernizing government.”

Prior to his election last year, Council President Zeke Cohen told The Sun he’d support removing the mayor’s appointees from the board, saying, “We must democratize our city’s financial decision-making.” In December, he told The Sun he’s “open to” a restructuring of the board, but didn’t explicitly say he’d favor an amendment to shrink it.

The last time such an amendment was proposed was in May of last year. Then-Council President Nick Mosby introduced it shortly after losing the Democratic primary, but the bill was never brought to a vote. He told The Sun in September it would be better to wait for the incoming council members to take office, since the measure wouldn’t go before voters until 2026.

Two council members told The Sun in October they would have supported the bill if it had come up for a vote: Eric Costello, who left the council in December, and Odette Ramos. Ramos added that she’d vote for the amendment if it comes up again.

Former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake vetoed a similar measure in 2016. An attempt to override the veto failed, with eight council members voting in favor, five against, one abstaining, and one absent.

Comptroller Bill Henry has repeatedly expressed support for the amendment, saying the current structure “allows a single person to wield unchecked power over the allocation of taxpayer dollars.”

“The existing framework relegates the other two Citywide elected officials to the sidelines when it comes to making these important financial decisions that affect every City resident,” he told The Sun in an emailed statement in September.

Disagreement over the spending board structure came to a head in 2023, when Henry and Mosby attempted to delay the mayor’s decision on a $134 million deal with Baltimore Gas and Electric Co., by not attending the meeting. They argued the meeting couldn’t happen without a five-member quorum, but their absences were marked as abstentions. The proposal moved forward with approval from the mayor and his two appointees.

Proposals to reform the Board of Estimates came up during a recent Charter Review Commission, according to the committee’s 2024 final report. The proposals included replacing the director of public works with the council vice president and requiring that four members of the board constitute a quorum. Neither proposal was recommended by a committee to the full commission.

In 2020, Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who served as Baltimore’s mayor from 1999 to 2007, opposed Scott’s proposal to restructure the board.

“We should not lightly throw out the strong-mayor system,” he said at the time.

Carson Swick contributed to this report. Have a news tip? Contact Brooke Conrad at bconrad@baltsun.com, 443-682-2356 or @conrad _brooke on X