City State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby attended the budget hearing she missed last week Monday night. She talked about the challenges her office faces and explained why her testimony before the council was late.
Both sides were very thorough. Mosby was clear about why city funding is so important for her fight on crime while city leaders asked questions to make sure taxpayer money goes to the right places.
"Citizens entrust us with asking the tough questions and pressing all agency heads whether they’re elected officials or not to hold them accountable for the use of taxpayer dollars," said Councilman Brandon Scott.
And that's just what the city's budget and appropriations committee did night during the state's attorney's office budget hearing.
Mosby was supposed to come before the council last week, but didn't due to a scheduling conflict saying she asked to postpone over a month ago.
"I'm grateful that he rescheduled it so that I could be in attendance," said Mosby.
Chair of the committee Eric Costello, had higher hopes for one of the city's largest agencies.
"The expectation is that the head of each agency comes in to testify before the council about they’re requests. The state’s attorney’s office is the 9th largest city appropriation."
City leaders talked of performance measures and asked Mosby tough questions about how the money given to her office will be spent.
"I think we were able to get out a lot of information about some of the successes in the state's attorney's office and i was encouraged," said Mosby.
Costello did not preside over the hearing, instead he gave the lead to Vice Chair Leon Pinkett citing that because of rumblings about his endorsement of another state's attorney candidate his judgement could be skewed, an allegation he says is false.
"I think that it was appropriate for him to recuse himself during this hearing," Mosby told WMAR 2 News.
Mosby was passionate about her quest for community involved policing, witness protection and the cleaning up of every day crime. She was also open about how much that costs, not to mention, the cost to run an agency with 19 divisions.
"We are up against a lot when we consider the record level of violence that we have in the city and I hope they will pass the budget as is requested," said Mosby.
Mosby said 90 percent of her budget pays for personnel, saying she may have to cut six prosecutors if the budget is not approved.
The city set aside more than $36 million dollars for her office. She's also applied for 8 million dollars in state and federal grants. The council could approve the budget as early as Monday.
