Baltimore mayor to take leave amid book scandal
By Rachel Chason, Erin Cox and Ovetta Wiggins | Washington Post
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh will take a “temporary” leave of absence at midnight, her spokesman said Monday, amid a growing scandal involving profits she made from selling a children’s book to businesses and entities intertwined with the government she oversees.
James Bentley, the mayor’s spokesman, said she will step aside for an unspecified period of time.
Jack Young, the city council president, will take over as acting mayor.
Pugh’s action comes as Maryland State Comptroller Peter Franchot called on her to resign.
The Baltimore Sun reported earlier Monday that, Kaiser Permanente paid Pugh more than $100,000 for copies of her children’s book series when the company was seeking a $48 million contract from the city’s spending board, which Pugh controls.
“The people of Baltimore are facing too many serious challenges, as it is, to also to deal with such brazen, cartoonish corruption from their chief executive,” Franchot wrote on Facebook, with a link to the Sun’s story on the contract with Kaiser Permanente.
Gov. Larry Hogan also sent a letter to the state prosecutor Monday asking for a formal investigation in Pugh’s contracts with the University of Maryland Medical System, which paid her $500,000 for her “Healthy Holly series” beginning in 2011, when she was a state senator. Hogan said he finds the allegations against Pugh “deeply disturbing” and is particularly concerned by the sales to UMMS because of how much public funding the hospital system receives.
Bentley referred all questions about “Healthy Holly” to the mayor’s personal attorney, Steve Silverman, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Pugh, a Democrat who was elected mayor in 2016, called the deals with UMMS a “regrettable mistake” at a news conference last week and said she never wanted to lose the trust of residents. She has resigned from the UMMS board and returned $100,000 for books that were not produced.
In his letter, Hogan said in his letter to State Prosecutor Emmet Davitt that all Marylanders should have confidence that follow the “highest legal and ethical standards.” Hogan, a Republican, said he did not want to interfere with the state prosecutor’s investigation but wants to ensure that “these types of problems do not ever reoccur.”
The state prosecutor’s office said Monday that it can neither confirm nor deny the existence of investigations, as is long-standing practice.
State Sen. Bill Ferguson, a Democrat from Baltimore, stopped short of calling for her resignation, but said it was hard to see a path for redemption.
“I hope that the mayor is doing some very deep soul searching today,” Ferguson said. “The drip drop of information continues to get worse, and I know this is such an unbelievable distraction of the very real issues that Baltimore City faces.”
He said that other companies that have engaged in private business with the mayor while she held public office need to disclose it immediately.
“It’s time for real accountability,” he said.