The Baltimore City Legislative Investigations Committee held an informational hearing on the Water for All water affordability program on Friday, hearing presentations from Department of Public Works and the Mayor's Office of Children and Family Success and testimony from residents and advocates. Councilwoman Phylicia Hoda Ramos, sponsor of the resolution that created the hearing, said the session was meant to assess enrollment, program differences from the prior BH2O initiative and ways to boost participation.

Councilwoman Ramos opened the hearing by noting the program was established under the Water Accountability and Equity Act (Council Bill 18-0307) and that the committee wanted data on enrollment, homeowner and tenant breakdowns, demographics, process and recommendations for improvement.

Resident Alexis Scofield gave extended public testimony criticizing the rollout of Water for All, calling the mailed materials confusing and the phone help line ineffective. "When you call that number, you can go to one of the Northwestern, the Southern, the Northern office... all you hear is music," Scofield said, recounting multiple long hold times and disconnections. She also said she lost an earlier $15 hardship and described difficulty navigating the application before receiving help from DPW staffers Terrence Jennings and Anthony Mills.

DPW and MOCFS staff described changes they say have improved administration since the program launched. Penny Lewis of the Mayor's Office of Children and Family Success said the city rebuilt the application platform in-house (Workday) after a vendor announced a sunset, moved from issuing many tenant checks to applying credits directly to accounts, and reduced average processing time to 23 days. Lewis said the switch reduced the number of live checks issued to tenants from roughly $1.2 million in one fiscal year to 184 checks totaling about $205,000 last year, a cost avoidance she estimated at roughly $700,000.

Terrence Jennings, utility policy manager at DPW, presented program data from fiscal years 2022'26. He said the presentation counted "about 22,073 applications" across the period and that "the total discounts that were dispersed for homeowners and tenants was approximately $14,000,000." Jennings reported that roughly 66% of applications were approved, about 25% denied, 2% were RFIs and 6% expired; denials commonly resulted from no response to requests for information, income over the eligibility threshold, or duplicate/other errors. Jennings said median household income among applicants was low (he cited figures including a median income near $13,357) and that the median household size reported in the data was two people.

Officials described program safeguards and outreach. Staff said they run audits when credits exceed $2,000 (419 audits in the past year, which staff said produced a $2,000,000 cost avoidance), implemented automated alerts in the application platform to flag duplicates, and began targeted marketing including posters at MOCFS centers and weekly robocalls of 5,000 numbers with a reported 90% hit rate.

Anthony Mills of the Office of Water Advocacy and Customer Appeals (Waka) described a proposed three-tier enrollment plan to increase coverage: Tier 1 would auto-enroll residents receiving Social Security/SSI using data matches; Tier 2 would auto-enroll residents receiving other state or public benefits; and Tier 3 would preserve the current annual, income-based application process. Mills said legal and regulatory changes to implement automation would require public comment under the Water Accountability and Equity Act and that staff are taking a methodical approach.

Finance Department staff said Article 24 of the city code designates the Finance Department as collector of water bills and applies credits once DPW notifies accounts of approved amounts. Committee members asked for a calculation of total program overhead (all staffing, mailers, platform costs and other administrative expenses). Gabe Seigwitz of the Finance Department agreed to coordinate with colleagues and provide the total overhead figure to the committee.

Advocates in the public record urged the city to prioritize auto-enrollment and address water debt forgiveness. Jorge Hilar of Food & Water Watch testified that his group's supporters "urge you to support this auto enrollment effort and hope that together the council, Waka, and others can next address this water debt forgiveness process." Hilar cited the board of estimates' recent rate increase and said rising rates increase the urgency of enrollment and debt-relief measures.

Committee members asked several follow-up questions and issued formal requests: (1) provide the committee a full accounting of Water for All's total administrative and program costs (staffing, mailers, platform, outreach) within one to two weeks; (2) provide detailed historical parameters and enrollment/eligibility data for the prior BH2O program, including the income threshold and the composition of the automatic-enrollment data file that was used; and (3) clarify whether stormwater and bay restoration fees are excluded by current Water for All rules (staff said they are not excluded and that removing those fees would require legislative change). DPW and MOCFS staff said they will return with additional data and that they expect to continue rulemaking and outreach work to expand enrollment.