Council hearing: Baltimore’s new housing permit system blamed for severe backlog; staff ordered to produce top‑10 fixes

At a Baltimore City Council Ways and Means Committee hearing, Interim Chief Information Officer Layla Layman told council members the recently launched housing permitting system has produced “significant challenges” that city staff are working to fix, and committee members requested a prioritized “top‑10” list of immediate corrections.

The issue matters because the permitting failures have created a backlog that residents and developers say is slowing construction, frustrating permit applicants and impairing the city’s strategy for addressing vacant properties. Councilmembers pressed staff for a plan and for faster fixes; a committee request will ask the Baltimore City Department of Information Technology (BCIT), the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and the Tiger team to supply the list ahead of the next permit‑office oversight hearing in July.

Layla Layman, interim CIO and interim director of the Baltimore City Office of Information and Technology, told the committee the problems stemmed from…