Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott issues refunds, amends donations after reporting 9 over $6K max

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott has amended several of his state campaign finance reports to correct errors regarding five individual contributors and issued refunds to four other donors after The Baltimore Sun reported the campaign accepted donations above the $6,000 maximum limit from nine entities.

The two amended reports were filed Saturday. They address several of the problematic acceptances of donations that were the result of the campaign recording multiple contributions under the name of the same donor in past versions of the reports it filed publicly with the Maryland State Board of Elections. The amended reports show some of the donations at issue now coming from businesses associated with the original donors, rather than the individual donors on a personal basis.

Maryland operates on a four-year campaign cycle, and individual donors are allowed to give up to $6,000 during that span. Business entities also are permitted to give up to $6,000 per cycle to a single candidate. The current cycle began Jan. 1, 2023, and ends Dec. 31, 2026. Political action committees are not bound by the same rule.

Amendments to Scott’s 2024 annual report, originally filed in January to the elections board, and his report for the most recent period in the current primary season, filed last week to the board, include the following:

• A $2,500 donation originally recorded from Jeffrey Hargrave, founder and president of construction firm Mahogany Inc., is now recorded by the campaign as coming from Mahogany Inc.;
• A $6,000 donation originally recorded from Thibault Manekin, a partner at Seawall Development, is now reported by the campaign as coming from Seawall Development;
• Two donations totaling $6,000 originally recorded from Dan Bythewood, president of La Cité Development, are now marked by the campaign as coming from La Cité;
• A $2,500 donation originally recorded from Mark Caplan, president and CEO of The Time Group, now shows as coming from Washington Place Equities, of which Caplan is the chairman, according to the campaign;
• A $6,000 donation the campaign originally recorded from James Haden, a donor associated with the Baltimore Recycling Center, is now recorded as coming from Jackson Hayden, his brother and owner of Baltimore Recycling Center.

Nick Machado, Scott’s campaign manager, said Sunday that the campaign’s mistakes were likely due to donations submitted via company credit cards. If a card is issued in the name of a principal or employee, the platform used by the campaign sometimes records a donation as coming from that individual. The campaign is responsible for checking that donations are recorded from the correct contributors, he said.

A representative for Bythewood contacted The Sun on Friday night, after the newspaper first reported on the issues it identified in the campaign’s publicly filed documents on the state election board’s campaign finance database. He said Bythewood was personally responsible for the initial donation of $6,000, but the subsequent donations of $2,000 and $4,000 were made using a company credit card with Bythewood’s name on it and should be attributed to the company, not Bythewood personally.

Several other donations that The Sun reported were over the $6,000 maximum required refunds. According to the campaign, refunds were issued to:

• Pennrose, a Pennsylvania-based development company;
• Mark Sapperstein, CEO of 28 Walker Street Development;
• Alan Ingraham, CEO of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors;
• Brandon Wylie, co-owner of florist Fleurs D’Ave.

Those refunds should appear on Scott’s next campaign finance report, due May 3. That’s the final report before the May 14 primary, in which Scott is seeking the Democratic nomination for a second term of four years.

Scott’s amended reports also included a $3,000 adjustment for a donation originally recorded from Mark Puente, CEO of Alterwood Health Management. The donation has now been recorded from Alterwood.

Machado said the excess and amended donations were atypical for the Scott campaign.

“Amidst over 7,000 donations by more than 4,000 contributors, these amendments account for less than 1% of our $1.6 million raised over the cycle,” he said.

State law requires campaigns to record donations accurately and track donors’ aggregated totals over an election cycle. If a report is found to be inaccurate after an audit by the state elections board, a campaign can be fined.