A fund intended to help reduce inequity in Baltimore City has languished unfunded and unused for nearly six years, despite being championed by Mayor Brandon Scott when he was a member of the City Council.

The Equity Assistance Fund was described as a way to reinvest in historically underfunded Baltimore neighborhoods. In 2018, Scott proposed creating the fund by amending the Baltimore City Charter. That amendment was greenlit by the city council, signed by then-Mayor Catherine Pugh and approved by voters at the ballot box all within the span of six months.

“I hope that one day, when I’m an old man sitting in a rocking chair talking to my grandkids, I’m able to look back and see that following the passage of these bills in 2018, Baltimore started to invest in those neighborhoods where people were redlined intentionally,” Scott told the National League of Cities about the Equity Assistance Fund and another equity initiative he championed in 2018.

But the Equity Assistance Fund has done nothing to invest in Baltimore communities. The fund has sat completely idle since it was created, a spokesperson for the Baltimore Office of Equity and Civil Rights confirmed to FOX45 News. No money has been placed in the fund, meaning no money has been distributed from the fund to Baltimore neighborhoods.

In 2019, Scott pledged to find a “funding source” for the Equity Assistance Fund. The promise was part of a policy proposal Scott published after taking over for Jack Young as City Council president in 2019.

“Nearly 80% of voters approved the Equity Assistance Fund when it appeared on the ballot in 2018. Now, it’s time to identify a funding source for the Equity Assistance Fund so that we can get to work,” Scott wrote in the proposal.

More recently, the Equity Assistance Fund was floated as a landing spot for state tax revenue generated from cannabis sales. But city lawmakers instead pushed for the creation of a new fund, the Community Reinvestment and Reparations Fund, to house that money. That decision went against the advice of former Baltimore Chief Equity Officer Dana P. Moore.

“The State’s Community Reinvestment and Repair Fund and the City’s Equity Assistance Fund share a common purpose, making the City’s Equity Fund a suitable fund for housing the allocated funds meant to address the negative impacts resulting from the prohibition of marijuana within the City,” Moore wrote to the Baltimore City Council in 2023.

Despite concerns from Moore and other agency leaders, city lawmakers asked voters to approve the creation of the Baltimore Community Reinvestment and Reparations Fund this November. It appeared on Baltimore City ballots as “Question G” and passed with 76% of the vote.

Meanwhile, there are no apparent plans to fund or use the Equity Assistance Fund. The mayor’s office did not respond to a question about the fund’s future despite Mayor Scott previously leading the effort to create it.

The website for the Baltimore City Office of Equity and Civil Rights teases “more information on the development and use of this fund will be coming soon,” but that exact language has appeared on the website for over four years, according to the Internet Archive.

The reason the Equity Assistance Fund has sat unfunded appears to stem from the way the charter amendment was worded. The amendment outlined that the mayor and city council “may” direct money to the fund but are under no obligation to do so. Former Baltimore City Solicitor Andre M. Davis pointed this out to the City Council before the amendment was passed.

“The revenue sources provision is ambiguous because it states that the fund ‘may consist of’ a ‘mandatory annual appropriation.’ These two phrases are seemingly incompatible and internally inconsistent,” Davis wrote. “The use of ‘may’ suggests the existence of legislative discretion and that there really is no mandatory appropriation requirement.”

The City Council passed the amendment with the “ambiguous” language and presented it to voters despite the warning from Davis. FOX45 contacted several city council members who sponsored the amendment asking why the fund has been entirely idle, but no one responded.

John Rennie Short, a professor emeritus of public policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said during an interview with FOX45 that he thinks the “brutal reality of politics” is keeping the fund under the radar.

“Politicians want to be associated with the bright and shiny new thing, the thing that they’ve developed,” Dr. Short said. “No one gets too excited about funding a program that’s already there. Because then it doesn’t become such a strong electioneering point for them.”

Mayor Scott’s first-term action plan made no mention of the Equity Assistance Fund. Baltimore notably received $641 million in 2021 from the American Rescue Plan Act, some of which was put toward other equity initiatives such as the Baltimore Digital Equity Fund.

Have a news tip? Contact Julian Baron via email at jtbaron@sbgtv.com.