What’s the rush? Baltimore’s mayor needs to put the brakes on conduit deal with BGE and allow for public input

“Transparency, accountability and integrity” — those are the three traits Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott promised from his administration in an op-ed published in The Sun a few months after he took office in December 2020. “These ingredients are essential for building trust,” he wrote, “especially given the public skepticism toward City Hall.” We would remind him of those words as he pushes forward a privately negotiated deal between the city and Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. to control the city’s underground conduit system. Few details had been publicly revealed about the plan until Wednesday afternoon, when the mayor’s office released the proposed contract, nearly two weeks after the Baltimore Brew first broke the story about the effort.