In spring 2023, unionists hailed the merger of two longtime unions representing public employees in Maryland:

AFSCME Council 3, which numbered 15,000 state government and university members, teamed up with AFSCME Council 67 and its biggest unit, Local 44, whose 9,000 members were mostly blue-collar Baltimore city and county workers.

“By joining forces, we will be one united and strong membership with the resources [to] demand better outcomes for ourselves, our co-workers and our workplaces,” noted an online statement by Council 3.

Unknown to members of either organization was this fact: Council 3 was in serious financial straits.

The previous year the union had been the target of a “phishing scam” that swindled $1 million in membership dues through a made-up Washington, D.C., law firm.

The losses came under the watch of Council 3 President Patrick Moran, who, subordinates say, reported the theft to law enforcement but never to his large membership – or to the union he was intent on taking over.

The theft left Council 3 with only $3.4 million in cash reserves as of June 30, 2022, according to a subsequently filed LM-2 Labor Department form.

While much smaller in size, Council 67 boasted gross receipts of $4.2 million in 2022 – and Moran rushed ahead as the year ended to fill the leadership vacuum created by the physical decline of Glenard “Glen” Middleton Sr., who had headed AFSCME Council 67 for more than a third of a century.

The former City Jail guard (and younger brother of heavyweight boxer Larry Middleton) took over the union job in 1987. When fired by the same board that had elected him four years later, he didn’t take the matter lying down.

“The day after the board’s vote to replace Mr. Middleton with staff representative John H. Carter, a fistfight broke out in the parking lot between members of the two factions,” noted a Baltimore Sun reporter, who found Carter and several members of his team nursing cuts and bruises at Harbor Hospital.

“This is crazy. It’s unbelievable. It’s just like thug-ism,” Carter told the paper while seeking medical treatment. Five people filed assault charges after the melee.

The national union reinstated Middleton to Council 67, but he still faced a challenge in his dual role as president of Local 44, which represented Baltimore sanitation workers, shop mechanics, water bureau employees, correctional officers and others.

Mechanic Anthony Marciszewski had organized a ticket to challenge Middleton, arguing that while Local 44 had by far the largest membership in Council 67, its members got little for the half-million dollars they paid in dues while Middleton collected two salaries.

Over the course of three hotly contested elections, the “New Directions” ticket lost to Middleton’s slate (here and here), and from 1995 on, Middleton exercised near total control over the Baltimore unions.

Both council and Local 44 leadership positions were handpicked by Middleton. So was a 26,000-square-foot industrial building on Bush Street purchased with union funds through an LLC he controlled. He held court in the building with city workers and passing politicians, while occasionally venturing out to participate in job actions and Democratic Party rallies.

In short, he had everything planned out except a successor. That was where Moran stepped in.

A career unionist based at AFSCME’s Washington headquarters, Moran was named Maryland Council 3 president in 2012. He became a visible critic of Republican Governor Larry Hogan and successfully lobbied the General Assembly in 2017 to fix a “botched” payroll system that the union said shortchanged some employees.

In 2021, he got Council 3 to back Tom Perez in the Democratic primary for Maryland governor, then jumped onto the Wes Moore bandwagon after Moore won the primary in July 2022.

It was in the first half of 2022 that Council 3 said it was tricked into sending $1,006,150 to the “Law Offices of Brian Lace,” supposedly housed in a Dupont Circle apartment building.

Cyber Scam Blamed for Loss

The union didn’t just make one or two payments through some internet sleight of hand. Records show that over the course of five months, Council 3 made six separate electronic payments for unspecified legal and advisory services.

The payments started at $49,680 in January 2022 and ended with three billings in June 2022 that totaled $770,690. The final payment – of $348,650 – was by far, the largest single expenditure the union made in 2022.

• AFSCME Council 3 lost $1 million of membership funds in “phishing scam,” government documents reveal (9/26/25)

Disclosing the loss in a U.S. Labor Department filing six months later – but not revealed on its IRS Form 990 IRS until the end of 2025 – the union said it “contacted the bank, legal counsel and law enforcement” when it recognized it had been phished, but not its membership.

According to AFSCME’s Financial Standards Code, a council’s president and secretary-treasurer are responsible for preparing and co-signing all checks and other union disbursements. That would place the onus on Moran and his part-time secretary-treasurer, Cherrish Vick, who both signed the original Labor Department form that disclosed the lost money.

Moran has refused to answer questions about the phishing incident or his role in approving six-figure payments to a lawyer not listed at the D.C. or Maryland bar.

At a public event last week, Moran waved away a Brew reporter, pointing to his closed mouth.

While Council 3’s overall cash assets dropped from $4.9 million to $3.5 million in fiscal 2022, Council 67 reported a healthy $4,106,318 balance at the end of June 2022.

By Moran’s own account, negotiations over the “unification” of the two unions accelerated in the second half of 2022, which he attributed to Middleton’s illness.

“We had worked together on various projects over the years, so why were we going to continue to both funnel resources when we could do things more efficiently,” Moran explained to Maryland Matters, which was hearing rumors of a potential merger.

Workers were “worried,” the publication said, that “Council 67 would be overshadowed by the much larger Council 3. The two unions, which both represented government employees, are not always in lockstep.”

Actually, the worry was much more intense than publicly acknowledged, a former Council 67 staffer told The Brew last week.

“This wasn’t a unification. It was a hostile takeover. The rank-and-file didn’t want it, but they had no voice. Glen himself mistrusted Pat. But there was nothing he could do,” said the staffer, who requested anonymity so he could speak candidly.

Another ex-staffer was equally blunt: “Moran and  Stu [Katzenberg, director of collective bargaining] got their hands on members’ dues and installed a puppet board to do their bidding.”

The combined union, announced in April 2023, carried only the Council 3 name. Moran was made president, Middleton retired and Council 67 was placed under the administratorship of Council 3.

Maryland Matters asked Moran why he hadn’t done more to disclose the decision to merge. “It wasn’t secret,” he said. “We just wanted to get everything in order. You’re talking about two long-term organizations coming together. It’s quite a process.”

A Fresh Cash Flow

Membership dues from Council 67 and Local 44 began flowing directly to Council 3. Between August 2023 and July 2024, $2.6 million was transferred to Council 3 from those entities, according to Council 67’s final LM-2 report, essentially a liquidation report, submitted to the U.S. Labor Department.

Moran moved his offices from rented quarters on West Ostend Street to the Bush Street building, and Council 3 took ownership of the property.

By June 2025, Council 3’s cash reserves had risen to $6.9 million – up from $3.4 million in June 2022 – and total assets jumped to $9 million thanks in large part to the union’s assumption of the office building.

According to its latest LM-2 report, Council 3 spent this in Fiscal 2025:

• $4,948,448 on general overhead and administration.

• $2,383,345 on representation activities.

• $329,557 on political activities and lobbying.

Of particular note were the following expenditures:

• $395,660 in legal fees to Kahn, Smith & Collins.

• $285,328 in total pay for President Pat Moran ($147,680 for salary, $137,648 for official business disbursements).

• $205,716 for convention lodging before rebates.

• $178,531 in total pay for Chief of Staff Sabeela Ally.

• $156,533 in total pay for Deputy COS Rachel Panciera.

• $115,951 in total pay for Bargaining Director Stuart Katzenberg.

• $84,974 on t-shirts, awards and promotions.

• $69,996 in legal fees to Gordon Feinblatt.

• $46,855 on catering and events.

• $32,500 to Concerted Action for digital-powered organizing.

• $9,000 to Maryland Democratic Party.

Rank-and-File Anger

The biggest challenge now facing Moran is not financial, but the anger and frustration of rank-and-file members of Local 44.

Following the two gruesome sanitation worker deaths of last year and scathing reports of hazardous working conditions by Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming, a group of sanitation workers staged a public protest last April at a City Council hearing.

In the presence of Moran and another union leader, they denounced Council 3 for having no presence at city solid waste yards, ignoring safety hazards, tolerating favoritism and hazing, and failing to bargain for much-needed wage increases.

One the workers, Stancil McNair, went on to win the election as Local 44 president in August, defeating Moran’s handpicked candidate. And five members of his ticket won leadership positions or were slated for a run-off to break a tie.

It was a shocking setback for Moran.

The losing presidential candidate, Trevor Taylor, filed a protest, saying the election was swung by members improperly allowed to pay outstanding dues and then vote, and by McNair’s relationship to IG Cumming, who Taylor said was trying to discredit union leadership in her reports.

Forward or Back?

Thirty years ago when the last semblance of an open election took place, the national AFSCME repeatedly came to Middleton’s rescue, fighting court injunctions and trying to keep his Marciszewski’s name off the ballot.

Last month, Carla Insinga, the international’s judiciary panel chair, backed Local 44’s attempt to invalidate McNair’s election (he and his colleagues had already been sworn into office) and conduct a new election.

McNair’s lawyer, former Baltimore mayoral candidate Thiru Vignarajah, denounced the process, calling the do-over election “a manifest public disgrace . . . designed to allow union bosses to handpick their own.”

In a reversal days later, the panel canceled the election, which had been planned for October 4. Insinga announced a investigation was underway. Last Thursday, Vignarajah and Taylor presented their cases at a private Zoom meeting with the judicial panel.

While the panel’s decision is anyone’s guess, Vignarajah said, “We hope a resolution comes quickly because there is a lot of work to do at the Department of Public Works and other city agencies. Stancil is eager to dig in on behalf of workers.”

“It’s also clear from the phishing expose that the union would benefit from financial transparency,” he added. “Where members’ dues have been properly spent and perhaps where they’ve been misspent – these are important questions for Council 3 leadership to answer.”

• To reach a reporter: reuttermark@yahoo.com