Attorney General Anthony G. Brown seeks enforcement recovery fund, defends staffing and training requests

Attorney General Anthony G. Brown told the subcommittee on Jan. 30 that the Office of the Attorney General’s fiscal 2027 allowance reflects both routine personnel costs and programmatic priorities, and he pressed lawmakers to approve a new enforcement recovery fund to capture civil penalties for use in future consumer-protection and enforcement work.

Brown said the overall OAG allowance increases by $8.3 million to $101.6 million in fiscal 2027 and described the $3.6 million in general funds to the Maryland Legal Services Corporation as a pass-through, not an operating expansion for his office. “We don’t touch it, modify it, influence it in any way. It’s a pure pass through,” Brown said, urging the committee to treat those dollars separately from OAG operating costs.

The attorney general identified two formal asks for the Appropriations Committee. First, he supported House Bill 705 to create an enforcement recovery fund that would allow the office to retain some civil-penalty dollars for reinvestment in enforcement activities instead of sending the penalties to the general fund. Second, Brown requested modest fee increases for securities and other consumer-protection filings that he said have not been raised in roughly 30 years.

Brown also disputed a DLS recommendation to cut $100,000 for training. He said the office has implemented a 12‑hour mandatory continuing-education requirement and that the proposed reduction equates to roughly $100 per employee. “We have invested a lot of time and energy in the last three years to build a training system that did not exist,” Brown said, asking members to reject the cut.

On staffing, DLS reported the fiscal 2027 allowance supports about 408.45 regular positions for OAG programs and that the office had 25.2 vacancies as of Dec. 31, 2025. Brown described broader personnel responsibilities that extend beyond positions on his budget: “We’re actually providing services to more people than our budget reflects,” he said, referencing approximately 1,060 total personnel the office manages across client agencies.

DLS asked the agency to provide timelines for planned procurements — including a $200,000 contract for additional ticket‑scalping enforcement resources — and for additional detail on the Federal Accountability Unit (FAU), which DLS credited with preserving federal education funding. Brown said FAU litigation has protected hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds and agreed to supply the requested breakdown about which agencies and programs benefited.

The committee did not take a vote on any bill or budget action during the hearing. Committee members expressed general support for the enforcement fund concept while noting other public-safety offices also need resources and asking that any new mechanisms consider broader public defense and oversight needs.

What comes next: DLS requested timeline and implementation details on the ticket‑scalping contract and a follow-up on FAU recoveries; the attorney general pledged to provide those items to the committee record.