BALTIMORE _ The Baltimore City Council on Monday urged Mayor Catherine Pugh to resign, but within hours of the council issuing its call Pugh responded saying she "fully intends" to return once her health improves.
The 14 council members sent a two-sentence letter to Pugh that was released at 7 a.m. urging her to step down and sent copies to Acting Mayor Bernard C. "Jack" Young, City Solicitor Andre Davis, Pugh's chief of staff Bruce Williams, and Baltimore's senators and delegates in the General Assembly.
"The entire membership of the Baltimore City Council believes that it is not in the best interest of the City of Baltimore for you to continue to serve as Mayor," the council members wrote to Pugh. "We urge you to tender your resignation, effective immediately."
The letter comes as Pugh has taken a leave of absence as mayor amid an unfolding scandal over her sales of her "Healthy Holly" children's books to entities that have business dealings with the city. The state prosecutor has opened an investigation into the book sales.
Shortly before noon Monday, Pugh's office issued a response saying the leave was for health reasons and that she plans to return to her duties as mayor.
"Mayor Pugh has taken a leave to focus on recovering from pneumonia and regaining her health," Pugh's office said in a statement. "She fully intends to resume the duties of her office and continuing her work on behalf of the people and the City of Baltimore."
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun on Monday, Young said he was not asked to sign the letter and that he would not have done so because it would appear to serve his own interests if he wanted to remain mayor _ a job he has repeatedly said he does not want to hold beyond an interim period.
But Young said the council's "unprecedented" call for a mayor's resignation will make it difficult for Pugh to return once her illness improves and her doctor clears her to come back.
"Her ability to govern would be very difficult," Young said. "Let's face it: How would she get anything done?"
The former council president said Pugh called him Monday morning and told him she intends to return to City Hall.
"She's still the mayor until she comes back or she resigns," he said.
City officials said a council has never asked a mayor to resign in recent history. And Young, a 21-year veteran of City Hall, said he could not remember such a request, but that he respects the council's right to ask Pugh to step down.
Signing the letter were: Council members Zeke Cohen, Brandon M. Scott, Ryan Dorsey, Bill Henry, Isaac "Yitzy" Schleifer, Sharon Green Middleton, Leon F. Pinkett III, Kristerfer Burnett, John T. Bullock, Edward Reisinger, Eric Costello, Robert Stokes Sr., Shannon Sneed and Mary Pat Clarke. That's every member of the council except for Young.
Pugh announced last Monday that she was taking an indefinite leave of absence to recover from a bout of pneumonia for which she was hospitalized for five days. But Pugh's spokesman said Saturday that she intended to return once her health has sufficiently improved.
That statement prompted the council to urge her to step down.
"Baltimore will continue to have a cloud over its head while the investigations into Mayor Pugh's business dealings go on," Scott said in a statement. "My colleagues and I understand the severity of the action we have taken, but know that it's what's the best for Baltimore."
Cohen acknowledged that the council's move was "unprecedented."
?"In addition to this unprecedented step, we are discussing several structural reforms to our city's code and charter," he said in a statement. "Baltimore deserves better."?
Forcing a mayor from office is tricky and perhaps not possible without a criminal conviction. Dorsey said last week that the city's charter clearly spells out how to remove a member of the council or the comptroller, but "there's no way for the council to remove a mayor."
Dorsey said the Maryland General Assembly could amend the state constitution or the city charter, opening an alternative avenue to removing a mayor.
"Dear General Assembly, I've noticed you have about 15 { more lawmaking hours and retain the power to amend our charter as well as the Constitution," Dorsey wrote in a tweet Monday.
Pugh and the University of Maryland Medical System have been under fire since last month when The Baltimore Sun reported nine of its board members had deals benefiting their private companies with the hospital network they were tasked with overseeing.
Three board members, including Pugh, resigned from the board, while four others were placed on leave. The medical system's CEO has also been placed on leave.
The hospital network paid Pugh $500,000 to produce 100,000 self-published "Healthy Holly" books to send to the Baltimore school system, but the mayor has admitted she didn't complete thousands of them. School officials have called the books they did receive "unsolicited" and say thousands of them are sitting unread in a warehouse.
At the same time she received the pay, Pugh, who was a state senator prior to becoming mayor, sponsored dozens of bills affecting hospitals in Maryland, including eight failed attempts at legislation that would have made it harder for aggrieved patients to successfully sue hospitals and doctors for large judgments via medical malpractice claims.
Pugh also did not list her Healthy Holly LLC business on state ethics forms until The Sun questioned her; she filed seven years of amended forms last month. On other state forms, Pugh listed her Healthy Holly company's address as being run out of her district Senate office paid for by taxpayers.
Health insurer Kaiser Permanente and Associated Black Charities said last week that they also bought roughly 30,000 copies, paying Pugh a total of nearly $200,000. Pugh voted in 2017 to approve a $48 million contract for Kaiser Permanente to provide insurance to city employees. Associated Black Charities has a deal with the city to manage a $13 million youth fund.
And, Columbia businessman J.P. Grant _ who has millions of dollars in transactions through the city's master lease arrangement _ said Wednesday his company cut a check for $100,000 to Pugh's Healthy Holly LLC in October 2016.
He said he received a copy of one book but no documentation of how his money would be used.
