The Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA) on Thursday approved a one-year contract that authorizes the organization to serve as the city’s events producer, arts council and film office until June 30, 2025, and clears the way for it to produce Artscape 2024 as planned on Aug. 2 to 4.
BOPA’s interim board voted 8 to 0 on Thursday to accept the contract negotiated with the Mayor’s Office over the past month. The vote came 10 days before BOPA’s current contract is due to expire, on June 30, and six weeks before Artscape 2024 is scheduled to begin.
Baltimore’s spending body, the Board of Estimates, still must approve the contract before it can take effect. That board’s next meeting is June 26, and BOPA board members expressed hope that the Comptroller’s office would add the contract as a “walk-on” agenda item for that meeting.
Thursday’s vote came after nine BOPA board members held a virtual meeting to consider the draft contract, spending part of the time in closed session because it contained financial details that affect BOPA personnel. When they came out of the closed session, eight board members voted to accept the contract without changes and the ninth member didn’t respond during the virtual tally and her vote was deemed an abstention.
The contract was not released, with BOPA CEO Rachel Graham reasoning that it was still “in draft form” until it gets on the Board of Estimates agenda and the city makes it available for public view. Still, BOPA interim chair Andrew Chaveas said he was encouraged by the board’s action.
“This is a huge milestone,” he said after the vote. “It gives us some room now to move forward and I’m excited about what this interim board can do…. Let’s get to work. Let’s do what’s right for the artists of the city. Let’s have a really productive conversation and move BOPA forward.”
“The city as well as this organization are committed in doing what’s best for the artists of the city of Baltimore,” Graham said.
The contract negotiations were part of the fallout from the departure of former CEO Donna Drew Sawyer, who resigned in January of 2023 after Mayor Brandon Scott said he lost confidence in her ability to lead the independent agency.
As CEO, Sawyer failed to put on Artscape and other civic gatherings in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Sawyer initially cited the COVID-19 pandemic as the main reason for not holding the public events that BOPA is charged with producing, but she still didn’t bring them back after other cities were resuming events in 2021 and 2022.
The last straw was Sawyer’s decision not to put on the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade on January 15, 2023, a decision that drew strong protests from U. S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume, former Mayor Sheila Dixon and others and led to Scott’s call for her resignation.
Sawyer was initially replaced by former BOPA board chair Brian Davis Lyles and then interim CEO Todd Yuhanick. Graham, who was previously the director of external relations for the Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture, was named BOPA’s CEO effective March 15. One of her first challenges as CEO was to work with BOPA’s board to negotiate a new contract that would enable BOPA to continue its work with the city past June 30.
One difference between this contract and previous ones approved by the Board of Estimates is that it is only for one year, whereas previous contracts were for multiple years. It also includes language that permits the city to revoke BOPA’s status as Baltimore’s arts council at any time, at the mayor’s discretion.
Because of the breakdown in relations between BOPA and the city during Sawyer’s tenure, the Mayor’s Office decided not to renew BOPA’s contract when it expired, but city officials said they would consider a new contract with terms that reflected the Scott administration’s vision for supporting the arts in Baltimore.
Anticipating that BOPA would continue to work with the city past June 30, Baltimore’s City Council agreed to provide more than $2.7 million in public funds to support BOPA’s operations during the fiscal year that starts July 1 – about the same as BOPA’s allocation for fiscal 2024. The funds were included in the $4.2 billion city budget that was approved earlier this week.
