Posted on 04/02/2019 1:24:16 AM PDT by blam
Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh announced on Monday that she's taking an indefinite leave of absence from office after it was revealed she received $500,000 from the University of Maryland Medical System in critics have called a "self-dealing" book sale.
Pugh's office in a statement said the mayor, a Democrat, has been "advised by her physicians that she needs to take time to recover and focus on her health," and said she felt as though she was unable to fulfill her obligations as mayor due to deteriorating health brought on by a recent case of pneumonia.
City Council President Jack Young will take over Pugh's day-to-day responsibilities, according to the statement.
Violent crime soars in Baltimore despite federal police oversight
In a letter released earlier Monday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, called on the state prosecutor to investigate allegations of self-dealing by Pugh. State Comptroller Peter Franchot, a Democrat, urged the mayor to step down immediately.
Hogan and Franchot's calls came hours after health care firm Kaiser Permanente disclosed to The Baltimore Sun that between 2015 and 2018, it paid $114,000 for roughly 20,000 copies of Pugh's self-published "Healthy Holly" children's book series.
Since 2011, Pugh has received $500,000 for selling the books to the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS), The Associated Press reported. The $4 billion hospital network, one of the largest private employers in the state, reportedly paid Pugh for 100,000 copies of her books between 2011 and 2018.
Pugh, who sat on the system's board since 2001, became Baltimore's mayor in 2016. The next year, Baltimore's spending board, which is controlled by the mayor, awarded a $48 million contract to the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of the Mid-Atlantic States Inc. Kaiser previously held that contract.
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(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Riiiiiight.
The potential prosecution of a sitting Democrat mayor in a city
that is falling apart wasn't even a consideration in the decision.
Riiiiiight.
More of these “book deals” need to be investigated. It’s a favored method of enriching DemonRat pols and retiring corrupt bureaucrats.
I thought the name of her book was “It takes a Pillage”, and that she had been working on a Russian translation version, which she was going to travel to Russia and speak about in exchange for lucrative fees. Or do I have my grifts mixed-up?
ET phone home.
Here’s the load of crap statement: “advised by her physicians that she needs to take time to recover and focus on her health,”
These Democrats are crooked as can be. When they get power because they have no God and no morals, it’s just a money grab anyway they can get it.
chickensoup’s constant railing of book deals as elite payola again proves correct.
It doesn’t get much more swampy than this.
What? No free wigs?
She started the book scam in 2011 - she was a state senator then.
This is the most publicized part of a broader problem confronting the
U of Md Medical System. They are accused of no bid contracting with companies owned by board members. Pugh was on the board and was outed as were other board members by a black woman state senator - Jill Carter.
$500k over 5 years is a drop in the bucket to the medical system - 25,000
employees-$4.5 billion in revenues per year - it’s like adding 1 employee
to the 25,000 from a cost basis.
It has brought the medical system - maybe largest employer in Maryland to its knees and rightfully so.
This scandal is about three weeks old - still a lot of entertainment value to
be had from this one.
Leftists use government to commit crimes.
JoMa
This sounds like a clever scam—I wonder if any other politicians out there have done it in other states.....low hanging fruit for any investigators out there....
Two Black Female Crook Mayors in a row, Baltimore is on a roll! And just think, that position was once held by Thomas D’Alessandro, Nancy D’Allesandro Pelosi’s white crook father. My question is, has Baltimore, in modern times, every had an honest mayor, black or white?
I assume this could be driven by a “cleaner” Dem who actually wants to improve things - maybe one tired of the city’s reputation as a corrupt sh!thole due to Corruptocrats/Kleptocrats like this.
Local radio WCBM has been covering this. Only 8700 of the books have been located and there is no evidence that the rest were ever printed. In addition, she designates herself as the publisher.
Meanwhile, those of us in the federal government who have anything to do with the movement of large sums of money in the contracting realm have to file annual financial disclosures. I wonder if that is a requirement for state employees, and how much it really does to prevent this kind of fraud.
Yes. William Donald Schaefer. Baltimore had a major renaissance when he was Mayor. All downhill from there.
Just ANOTHER dirty Dem.
“Violent crime soars in Baltimore despite federal police oversight”
Violent crime soars in Baltimore due to federal police oversight
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