Mayor’s race: Vignarajah challenges Scott’s management of $641M pandemic aid

Mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah argued Thursday that Mayor Brandon Scott has gravely mismanaged Baltimore’s influx of $641 million in federal pandemic aid, handing out multi-million dollar grants to political allies while risking forfeiture of funds as federal spending deadlines loom. Scott, a first-term Democrat, has distributed the city’s hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic aid across dozens of different agencies and nonprofits and nearly as many projects. His investments range from almost $50 million for fostering non-policing approaches to violent crime to affordable housing, blight remediation, meal programs and internet.