Is Baltimore City getting ready to sever ties with the independent agency that receives taxpayer funds to produce its major festivals, including Artscape, the Baltimore Book Festival and Light City?
That was the possibility raised by Mayor Brandon Scott and two City Council members, following a tense budget hearing between leaders of the Baltimore Office of Promotion and the Arts (BOPA) — the festival producer — and members of the council’s Ways and Means Committee, which is assessing requests for funding in the city’s fiscal 2024 budget. The council’s deadline for approving a budget is June 26.
BOPA is an independent nonprofit that has a contract to serve as Baltimore’s events producer, film office and arts council until June 30, 2024. Its leaders have requested $2.7 million from the city to help support BOPA’s operations for the year starting July 1, the final year of its contract with the city. Officials say they’ll use a portion of those funds to produce the first Artscape festival since 2019, scheduled for Sept. 22 to 24, 2023.
But for the second year in a row, City Council members expressed strong concerns about the way BOPA is using the money it receives from Baltimore City and questioned whether funneling money to BOPA is the best way to support the arts and produce major events in Baltimore.
After the hearing last Friday, Scott, City Council President Nick Mosby, and Ways and Means Committee chair Eric Costello issued a joint statement about “the continued mismanagement of BOPA” and the state of arts funding in Baltimore, five months after the resignation of former BOPA CEO Donna Drew Sawyer.
“Baltimore City has a deep history and rich tradition of supporting the arts,” they began. “It is part of what makes our city special, and we are profoundly committed to continuing to protect funding for the arts. It is actually that commitment that is driving our concern regarding the continued mismanagement of BOPA. Our trust in them as a zealous advocate for Baltimore’s arts community, responsible steward of allocated funding, and vehicle for delivering critical city funding to that community has been eroded by BOPA’s repeated inefficacy. Rather than assuaging these concerns, tonight’s presentation by BOPA’s leadership before the Ways and Means Committee intensified them and solidified their inability to deliver on their mandate.”
Scott, Mosby and Costello said the Mayor’s Office and council are aligned in their views about the organization that’s seeking $2.7 million from the city – $200,000 more than it received for fiscal year 2023.
“While we have remained hopeful and given BOPA’s Board of Directors an opportunity to improve its operations and gain the trust of City leadership and residents,” they said in their joint statement, “it became clear we should assess alternative options.”
The mayor and council members added that their statement is not a criticism of Baltimore’s arts community.
“Our concerns are simply about management and execution at BOPA and not the strength of Baltimore’s arts community,” they said. “Rest assured, we remain committed to you and the preservation of arts funding.”
Focus on governance
The joint statement comes as BOPA’s staff is settling into expensive new offices at 7 Saint Paul St., a space approved by Sawyer and built out to her specifications after she decided to move the agency from its former location at 10 E. Baltimore St. Though prompted by concerns that are different from those that troubled lawmakers in 2022, with the COVID-19 pandemic as a pressing public health issue, it reflects their continued frustration with the agency.
During last year’s June 2 budget hearing for BOPA, council members raised questions about its failure since 2019 to put on major events such as Artscape and the book festival, even though the city allotted funds for those events. They wanted to know what happened to the money they appropriated in fiscal years 2021 and 2022 and when and where Artscape and other events would be held in the future.
Then-CEO Sawyer said her office had to “pivot” during the COVID pandemic and use the city funds in other ways to support the arts, but she didn’t immediately provide specifics. At times she appeared unsure of even basic facts about her agency. At other times she was argumentative, lecturing council members on her views about how arts-related events could be used better to help the local economy.
When Sawyer still hadn’t answered the council members’ questions about BOPA’s expenditures during a second budget hearing on June 14, 2022, the Ways and Means Committee took the unprecedented step of temporarily withholding $196,000 from BOPA’s fiscal 2023 budget, until she answered their questions. Council members said the decision to withhold funds was a sign of their lack of faith in the agency. Sawyer vowed to answer the council members’ questions and get the money back in BOPA’s budget. But she ended up resigning on Jan. 10, after Scott said he lost confidence in her ability to lead the organization, and the money was never restored.
At this year’s budget hearing for BOPA, council members again expressed concerns about the way the organization was spending funds allocated by the city to support the arts. But instead of focusing on matters such as the footprint of the next Artscape festival, this time they zeroed in on the governance of the organization, including the committee structure of its board and decisions that board members have made over the last year.
“I want to start with some concerns around governance and administration of the organization,” Costello said at the budget meeting. “These concerns have been pretty heavy for me over the last year and a half.”
Costello also questioned the board’s pace in selecting a new permanent CEO, and the decision by board chair and president Brian Lyles to step into the role of interim CEO.
“I’m deeply concerned that an entity that receives this level of financial support from the city, specifically the board, has handled this leadership transition in this manner,” Costello said. “I want to be very upfront about that. Deeply, deeply concerned.”
Sawyer’s severance package
Sitting in the audience at City Hall during the budget hearing was Tonya Miller Hall, the former BOPA officer whom Scott named to serve as Senior Advisor for Arts & Cultural Affairs in the Mayor’s Office as part of the shakeup at BOPA in January.
Fielding questions from council members was Lyles, who has been serving as interim CEO without compensation since Sawyer’s departure; Brian Wentz, BOPA’s chief financial officer since 2019; and Jocquelyn Downs, senior director of programming and the arts council at BOPA and “the key person responsible for Artscape,” as Lyles put it. Also present was Todd Yuhanick, a film producer and former public relations company executive who was named BOPA’s new interim CEO one day before the budget hearing.
One line of questioning was about the severance package approved for Sawyer. Council members wanted to know how much she was receiving and who approved the payment and when. They also wanted to know about an application Sawyer signed to have the U. S. government trademark the name Artscape – an initiative later squelched by Baltimore’s law department, on the grounds that BOPA didn’t have rights to the name — and how much money BOPA spent on attorneys and fees to apply for the trademark from the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office.
Council members also wanted to know how often BOPA’s governing board meets and how many board members have resigned over the last year. They asked for a “comprehensive accounting” of minutes from all of BOPA’s board meetings, executive board meetings and committee meetings, both in person and virtual going back to 2020, and copies of the organization’s Form 990 federal tax filings for the past three years.
Their probing, and the answers from the BOPA representatives, revealed a governing board in disarray, unable even to post minutes of at least one meeting online because so many members had resigned that the board didn’t have a quorum to approve them.
Council member James Torrence said he wanted to know about the expenses for the trademark application and Sawyer’s severance package because any expenditures over $10,000 are supposed to be approved by the full board of directors. Council member Phylicia Porter said she wanted to review minutes of board meetings to see if the board complied with federal requirements for 501(c)(3) organizations such as BOPA.
The typical cost for a trademark application is between $14,000 and $18,000, and that’s before fees for trademark attorneys and paralegals, which can be as much as $40,000, Torrence said. “That’s a significant expenditure that should have been approved by the board,” he said. “I have serious concerns about the funding that we send your organization at this time because I want to make sure the cost controls are there.”
Torrence also asked for the dates served by each board member who recently stepped down. “I just want to make sure that we are clear about whether their departure was a scheduled departure or whether there was a departure in protest to where the current direction of the organization is going,” he said.
Before she resigned, Sawyer made more than $170,000 in total compensation for the year ended June 2020. Lyles confirmed that Sawyer’s severance package was more than $10,000 but declined to give an exact figure.
Lyles said the severance package was approved this spring by BOPA’s three-member executive committee but he couldn’t recall whether it was approved during an in-person meeting, a video conference, or by email. Executive committee member Franklin W. McNeil Jr. said it was a virtual meeting. Executive committee member Michael Shecter said he wasn’t sure if the meeting was recorded but there were emails about it. Lyles said the figure wouldn’t be in any board minutes because it was approved within the past month. “It was a long process,” he said. “I really can’t go into complete details because it is a personnel matter.”
Torrence said he was concerned because city taxpayers are paying Sawyer’s severance. Costello said during the meeting that he was “gravely concerned about the governance of this organization” because Sawyer’s severance package was approved recently and all three members of BOPA’s executive committee were appearing before his committee and yet “no one is in a position to tell me the forum at which this decision was made.” He said after the hearing that he still wants to know the amount of Sawyer’s severance. “We’re going to get it,” he said.
Lyles said “four, five” board members have resigned since January, on a board with a total of “seven or eight” board positions. They were “long time members, and it was part of attrition and the regular process of board governance,” he said. One board member who departed is former chair Anana Kambon, who led the search committee that recommended Sawyer, an in-house hire, in 2018. Another board member who left within the last year was Heidi Daniels, president and CEO of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, who stepped down before her term was up, citing another commitment that would consume much of her volunteer time.
Lyles announced two new board members at the budget hearing: local artist and museum curator Jeffrey Kent, and Bukola Rashedat (B.R.) Hammed-Owens, a project manager and operations officer with Baltimore’s Department of Housing and Community Development.
Other current board members in addition to the executive committee members, according to BOPA’s website, are: Andrew Chaveas, an architect and project manager with Cushman & Wakefield, a company involved in the leasing and build-out of BOPA’s new offices; Sandra Gibson, executive director of the Maryland Film Festival; and Paula Rome, a retired public relations professional. Kent and Rome were also on the search committee that recommended Sawyer.
Naming BOPA’s next CEO
Costello asked when BOPA’s board expects to name a new permanent CEO and why Lyles stepped in to serve as interim CEO after Sawyer resigned?
Lyles, who is the director of development at the Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, said the board engaged m/Oppenheim Executive Search to help it find both an interim CEO and a permanent CEO. m/Oppenheim is the firm hired by the American Visionary Art Museum to find its current president, Jenenne Whitfield. Lyles said BOPA identified Yuhanick as a result of working with the company. He told council members he wasn’t sure if BOPA would be able to name a permanent CEO in time for Artscape in September, and that it would depend in part on “the level of candidates” that BOPA gets for the position.
“We hope this fall,” he said. “It would be great if we had someone in place for Artscape. Not sure if that’s going to happen, with the summer being an issue, summer vacations. Not quite sure but we were hoping for the fall.”
Costello, who represents the district where Artscape has traditionally been held, asked why the board hasn’t moved faster. Lyles, who joined the BOPA board in 2017 and was elected board president in late 2021, said board members talked in January about the need to hire a search firm but wanted to address several other concerns before it did so.
“We knew we had some initial items that we needed to solve first,and those were first and foremost,” Lyles said. “Just needed to make sure that we had the right staff and the operations in line. We wanted to make sure that everything was continuing as it needed to.”
Before it could name a new CEO, Lyles said, BOPA had to form a search committee and select a search firm. He said he also felt he needed time to get more information about BOPA’s operations so he could tell the search firm exactly what BOPA’s board wanted in its new CEO.
“As board chair, I would normally not know the day-to-day operations,” he explained. “I needed to learn those in order to address any questions or concerns or even to talk about the responsibility of a CEO coming on board. So those are things I needed to learn and I think the board needed to learn before we could actually initiate that search.”
Essentially, “we wanted to take the time to make sure we find the right person,” he said. The board also needed time to “find the right people” for the search committee, and it wanted to shore up relationships “with the city and City Hall,” he said.
Costello asked why the board named a new interim CEO after four-plus months rather than a permanent CEO. Lyles said it was a two-step process and that m/Oppenheim is involved in both steps. He said the board initially thought it would conduct a relatively local search for an interim CEO and then a broader search – “far and wide” — for a permanent CEO. But “once we hired m/Oppenheim, they let us know that they could assist in the selection of the interim CEO free of charge,” he said. “We jumped on that opportunity and that’s how we have Mr. Todd Yuhanick here at this time.”
Hiring from within
Costello asked why the board didn’t immediately select a member of BOPA’s staff to serve as interim CEO. Lyles said he understood that immediately after Sawyer’s resignation, “none of the senior staff wanted to move into that position.”
“Is that your understanding of the situation?” Costello asked Wentz and Downs, the senior staffers sitting next to Lyles.
Wentz contradicted what Lyles told the council.
“We recommended to the board that someone internal in the organization be named the interim” CEO, Wentz said. “We expressed that early on in the process, in late January-early February, and that option was not selected by the board.”
A senior staffer was willing to take the interim position? Costello asked.
More than one, Wentz answered.
Wentz said he wanted to clarify his statement. He said that while the option of hiring from within the staff was presented to the board, “it was not the preferred option from internal staff.” He explained that he preferred to stay “in the background,” but Downs said she would be willing to step into the interim role “if needed.” He said that, ultimately, either he or Downs would have accepted the interim position if the board wanted to appoint someone from within the staff.
“We told the board that if this was the option that they were in favor of, we would – one of Jackie or myself — would step in,” he said.
“Jackie is fantastic, from all my experiences working with her,” Costello said. “Nothing but wonderful things to say about her. Ms. Downs, you’re a rock star.”
Costello asked Lyles why he told council members that no one internally was willing to take on the interim CEO role.
“I believe you said immediately after Donna’s departure,” Lyles said. “We did not have any internal staff that stepped up at that point. I think we had Jackie and Brian offer later. But we had already worked toward engaging m/Oppenheim as a search firm to handle the permanent search and also to help us select an interim.”
“Is that your understanding?” Costello asked Wentz.
“That’s correct,” Wentz said.
‘Quite peculiar‘
Costello said that while he respected Lyles for his willingness to step in as BOPA’s interim CEO without compensation, he found it unusual.
“I have to say that it is quite peculiar, and I have never heard of an instance where the chair of the board was running the day-to-day operations of an organization,” Costello said.
Lyles said there have been other instances. “It’s not unusual,” he told Costello.
In his opening remarks before questioning began, Lyles said that working directly with BOPA staffers has been a valuable experience that gave him a better understanding and appreciation of everything BOPA’s staff does.
“I am honored to have had the opportunity to step into the role of interim CEO,” he said. “Board members typically do not have the opportunity to experience the day-to-day work of staff and all that they make possible. It’s been extremely gratifying to work closely with our very talented professional team who care so deeply for our local artists and create the programming that enhances quality of life for young and old alike.”
He promised to keep the council informed about the CEO search.
“Let me assure you that this is among our highest priorities, and we intend to involve you in the process as the pool of candidates narrows.”
The trademark controversy
Asked about Sawyer’s 2021 application to trademark the name Artscape, Lyles said he wasn’t personally involved and only learned about it in January, during the transition period following her departure. He said the subject has not been discussed at a full board meeting.
“It was done by previous leadership, who is no longer there, so I can’t really speak to specific details,” he told the council members. “I’ve never seen the paperwork, actually.”
Shouldn’t the board have known about “a legal step of that magnitude” and either approved or nixed it? Costello asked. “Wouldn’t that require board approval?”
Lyles said he agrees that BOPA’s application to trademark the name Artscape was “a mistake.” But he said he didn’t think it was necessary to bring it up at a full board meeting because by the time he learned about it, the city’s law department had stepped in and BOPA’s application had been withdrawn. He also didn’t bring it up, he said, because by then he was acting as the interim CEO and had assured the Mayor’s Office that such an incident wouldn’t happen under his watch.
“I would say the higher-level discussion in general about the trademark, it would have been great if the board at that time had seen the details,” Lyles said to Costello. “I agree with you, yes. It should have been. But it was not and that is previous leadership, and we are moving forward because, as I said, we had a discussion with the Mayor’s Office that this should not have happened and this will not be happening again regarding trademarks. Anything we do is for the betterment of the city. We know we work for the city… Nothing like that would happen again under current leadership”
Has the board changed its bylaws or otherwise taken any steps to prevent a similar incident from occurring in the future? Costello asked.
“We have not yet, but we will do so,” Lyles said.
What has prevented the board from doing so already? Costello asked.
“I’ll have to check the bylaws just to see if we need to make any amendment or not, but an amendment is a good idea,” Lyles said. “We definitely do not want this issue to come up again, and we definitely do not want the staff to have that ability without proper notification or proper guidance through the board.”
“You’ve known about this for five months and the board nor the executive committee has ever discussed this in a board setting?” Costello asked again.
“No we have not, not since then,” Lyles said. “We were discussing other issues that were more important, because this was in the past and we thought the situation is moot at this point. And since I am at the leadership, leading the staff, we knew that nothing like that would happen during my realm, and nothing like that has happened during my realm. But I agree that that should be looked at by our board.”
Conflict of interest
“Did you not feel it appropriate to share with, at a minimum, the executive committee of the board, the fact that this incident has occurred?” Costello asked.
“As I said, the incident was resolved and we talked to the Mayor’s Office, that we had agreed not to pursue it any further,” Lyles replied. “As for oversight and governance, yes, we definitely should be looking at that. But that has not happened during the past five months.”
Costello said he thought that this is where BOPA had a potential conflict of interest, and the judgment of its leaders comes into play.
“This is why I stated about 12 or 13 minutes ago that I find it very peculiar for an organization to have a board chair running the day-to-day, because there is a conflict that exists,” he said to Lyles.
“You leading the day-to-day resulted in your board not knowing about this issue,” Costello said. “I’m not a judge or lawyer, but that seems pretty important to me. So it’s quite disappointing that this was not communicated to the rest of your board. We’ve been asked to approve a $2.7 million appropriation to BOPA this year. These governance and administration questions and concerns that exist for me are going to give me trouble sleeping at night.”
Council member Odette Ramos said she thought Lyles and the rest of his board should have given the fallout from the trademark controversy much more attention.
“Please understand the concern of the council, because when we found out about the trademark issue, that was really a slap in the face, frankly, to us,” Ramos said. “Artscape is near and dear to everybody’s heart and it belongs to Baltimore. So that actually should have been the first item of business that you took care of, in terms of making sure that something like that wouldn’t happen again.”
Farmers’ Market
Besides discussing BOPA’s board and governance, council members had other questions.
Torrence asked about the recent resignation of the staffer who was in charge of the weekly Baltimore Farmers’ Market under I-83, one of BOPA’s initiatives. “The person that was in charge has departed, but we have moved someone else up into that position,” Lyles said.
Porter said she couldn’t find minutes from BOPA’s December 2022 meeting on its website. Lyles said those minutes aren’t posted online, as required by the federal government for non-profits, because the subsequent quarterly meeting in March 2023 didn’t have a quorum and the board couldn’t approve the minutes from the previous meeting.
Ramos asked what BOPA did with money that was allocated in the fiscal 2023 budget for the Baltimore Book Festival, which it didn’t put on. Lyles and Wentz said they would provide that information.
Ramos also brought up the Baltimore Public Art Commission’s recent decision to deaccession three works of city-owned art inside the former Lake Clifton High School, which is targeted for demolition to make way for a new satellite campus for Morgan State University. She asked Lyles for a list of all works of public art that have been deaccessioned by the Public Art Commission over the past 10 years.
Regarding Lake Clifton, “it is extremely important to the alumni that they have at least some pieces of their building in order to give them that history that they deserve,” Ramos said. “There is a lot of public art in that school for a reason. It was one of the only places when it was built, back in the 1960s, where people from East Baltimore, black families from East Baltimore, could go see art. So it is very upsetting to me that the Public Art Commission would deaccession three pieces of its own art.”
Lyles said public art is “a particular love of mine” and promised that BOPA would help Ramos save the deaccessioned works. He told Ramos that BOPA provides staff support to “assist and administer” the Public Art Commission but leaves decisions about deaccessioning to the commission members. As for the list she requested, “we can certainly find an answer for you,” he said.
Costello and Mosby said they do not support a recommendation by City Council member Zeke Cohen to cut BOPA’s funding by $1 million and shift the funds to the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Costello said he believes a $1 million budget cut would have a “catastrophic impact” on Baltimore’s arts community.
“I want to be explicitly clear that that suggestion that $1 million be cut from funding that supports our very vibrant arts community in Baltimore is categorically irresponsible,” he said.
Mosby, who referred to Lyles as “Mr. Little,” thanked him for stepping into “this very challenging role and attempting to navigate a really terrible course over the past couple months.” He agreed with Costello about Cohen’s suggestion to cut $1 million from BOPA’s budget.
“As the chair has stated, it’s categorically irresponsible for us, in such a small amount in comparison to the larger city budget, to cut anything away from the arts — more importantly, our artists,” Mosby said. “I would just want the citizens to know, I would want the BOPA community to know, that this body sits in full support of strengthening the arts, and the reality is that we don’t do enough. So cutting, again, is completely irresponsible.”
‘A period of transition’
In his remarks to council members, Lyles referred to BOPA as the “primary organizer and presenter of artistic and cultural programming for the residents of our great city” and “the city’s primary facilitator of major events and festivals.”
He acknowledged that the organization is in “a period of transition” and said he knows it has more work to do to regain the council’s trust. He said the board is working to do just that.
“I come before you today with no illusions,” he said. “The reputation of BOPA has been damaged, and a number of you have lost confidence in the organization. The entire board — and the staff — take this very seriously and are utterly committed to re-establishing the trust necessary for us to be true partners in supporting, promoting, and enabling Baltimore’s rich artistic and cultural community for the benefit of all city residents — north, south, east and west.”
In addition to producing a three-day Artscape festival in September, Lyles said, BOPA is working to bring back the Baltimore Book Festival in 2024 and is “currently in discussions” to bring back the Light City festival in 2025. He said BOPA hosted the Baltimore City delegation of Maryland’s General Assembly on Maryland Arts Day in February and has “interactions with artists throughout the year.” On July 4, he said, “we will present music and fireworks at the Inner Harbor, in collaboration with Waterfront Partnership.”
Before she resigned, Sawyer had been considering the idea of renaming BOPA “Create Baltimore.” For the new offices on St. Paul Street, she commissioned a mural that has one word in the center in capital letters: CREATE. She announced an opening reception at the new offices for last Dec. 7 but cancelled it when work wasn’t complete. She also launched an effort to revamp BOPA’s website, which was supposed to be unveiled June 1 but wasn’t.
Lyles said he will soon be able to brief council members on another Sawyer initiative – a strategic planning effort she began with the help of outside consultants to guide BOPA’s activities in the future. He said it is “the first ever in the 40-year history of this organization.”
To develop the strategic plan, BOPA’s paid consultants surveyed members of Baltimore’s arts community to learn what they thought its priorities should be and what they’d like to see it do.
The final plan “was completed by the board’s strategic planning committee earlier this year, and now after presentation and some additional input by BOPA staff, and final board approval, we will begin to share that plan later this month with you individually, with City Hall and the community,” Lyles told council members.
‘Utmost commitment’
Lyles promised the Ways and Means committee members that he, Yuhanick and other board representatives will keep working to fulfill BOPA’s mandate and strengthen BOPA’s relationship with its stakeholders during the final year of its contract with the city.
“Suffice it to say, we are moving forward and with utmost commitment to working closely with you, with the Office of the Mayor and with leaders of our cultural institutions, as well as with our network of local creatives,” he said.
“Beyond our regular updates to the city and City Council through the Front Burner Reports, and select interactions with council people, we now plan to have more personal interaction with you, and all of our City Council members, throughout the year.”
Lyles said he thinks the name BOPA doesn’t begin to convey all the contributions its employees make to the life of the city.
BOPA “is not just an acronym,” he said. “It’s a team of people who dedicate their time and talents, and it’s a network of tremendously creative individuals across our city — all dedicated to enhancing the cultural fabric of Baltimore, and increasing the social, emotional and economic impact that art and culture make possible.”
Read more here about the alternative options that local arts advocates are proposing for supporting the arts in Baltimore.
