Baltimore County ACC to centralize opinion drafting; Office of Law to add "legal sufficiency" review

Baltimore County’s Administrative Charging Committee announced on April 3 that a county staff member will draft all ACC opinions beginning with the committee’s May meeting, a change intended to reduce member workload while preserving members’ authority to set outcomes.

The staff member, Aiden, told the committee he now has access to evidence.com and will prepare opinion drafts for the panel to review. "Starting for the May ACC meeting, I will be drafting all ACC opinions," Aiden said. He said members will still be expected to review reports of investigation and body-worn camera footage and may recuse themselves if they feel they lack adequate information.

The committee was told the drafting change will include a new legal-sufficiency review by the Office of Law before opinions are forwarded to Internal Affairs. Under the new timeline, drafts that previously reached Internal Affairs on the Monday after an ACC meeting will instead arrive on the Wednesday after the meeting to allow time for Office of Law review. "Nothing will go to Internal Affairs until the Office of Law says, 'Yes, we're good,'" a committee speaker said during the discussion.

Committee members asked several procedural questions about templates, file naming and access to the committee tracker. The drafter said he would largely retain the current opinion template and that the templates would include standard outcome labels such as "unfounded" and "exonerated." He said he would CC the chair and vice chair on draft opinions so someone else had access if a presiding member was unavailable.

A drafting threshold was described: if more than 25 cases arrive in a cycle, the drafter will ask committee members to help draft opinions for cases above that threshold. The committee was told the "25" cutoff is a living figure and could change if caseloads require it.

The change, the drafter said, aligns Baltimore County with practices used in similar jurisdictions, where staff prepare drafts and in-house counsel reviews them for legal sufficiency. Committee members emphasized they retain final control over opinion content and that outcomes voted by the committee will not be altered by the Office of Law panel.

The committee did not take a formal vote on the procedural redesign at the April 3 meeting; staff said the change will begin in May and that members will continue to receive case-notification emails and may request training on evidence.com and file-labeling conventions.

Looking ahead, staff said they will implement the new drafting workflow at the May meeting and will provide templates and guidance to members before that date.