Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen is the latest local official to revive calls for sweeping changes to the city’s spending board.

Mayor Brandon Scott recently told The Baltimore Sun he wants to eliminate the Board of Estimates altogether — an effort to modernize and drag the spending board into the 21st century.

Now Cohen, who as a councilman wanted to ensure spending power wouldn’t be centralized in one person’s hands, said he plans to reintroduce a bill this year to examine best practices for the board.

“My goal is to provide excellent oversight over Baltimore’s precious taxpayer dollars,” Cohen told The Sun in a text message Thursday.

His previous bill, introduced in March 2023, would have established a commission to study how other cities spend money and recommend best practices.

“This term, I will reintroduce it and work in partnership with Mayor Scott, Comptroller Henry, my colleagues and our communities to find the best path forward for Baltimore,” Cohen said.

Multiple proposals to restructure the city’s Board of Estimates — which handles the city’s fiscal policy — have come before the council over the past 30 years. Advocates for reform say the current structure puts too much power in the hands of the mayor, as he and his two appointees who traditionally vote with him, make up a majority of the five-member board.

Desmond Stinnie, who moderates the “Baltimore City Voters” Facebook group and has lived in Baltimore since 2004, is among the reform advocates.

“If the mayor’s got three votes, you kind of wonder why there’s a board to begin with,” Stinnie said. “I think the spending of our city should be done not in a dictator-type style, but should be done in a consensus-building type of approach.”

Stinnie reached out to city neighborhood associations in 2023, following a controversial deal with Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. that was approved by the mayor, over the objections of former City Council President Nick Mosby and Comptroller Bill Henry. Stinnie asked whether other city residents would support a petition to restructure the board to be composed of the mayor, City Council president, comptroller, city solicitor — who the mayor appoints — and one current city council member who is not the president or vice president of the council.

Stinnie’s petition received dozens of signatures. He emailed the document to City Council members in April 2023, requesting their consideration. He said he received no replies.

Stinnie said his concerns about the spending board structure predated Scott’s mayorship and had nothing “personal” to do with the current mayor.

Scott, while serving as city council president in 2020, previously advocated for shrinking the board by cutting the mayor’s two appointees, leaving the mayor, City Council president and comptroller — all citywide-elected officials — in control of the board. The proposal never came up for a vote after he postponed it following his victory in the 2020 Democratic mayoral primary.

On Wednesday, Scott suggested the board could be eliminated altogether, but his office didn’t provide details explaining what kind of spending structure would replace it after multiple requests for comment.

Asked if the board should be restructured or eliminated, West Baltimore Councilman James Torrence said he didn’t want to “think in hypotheticals… especially with the implications for the charter and the structure because that is a major change to city government.” He added that he’s open to examining possibilities.

“I want to know the deep nuts and bolts of how those changes would impact city government,” he said.

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