BALTIMORE _ Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh will take a leave of absence, engulfed by a scandal over hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments for her self-published "Healthy Holly" children's books.
City Solicitor Andre Davis confirmed the mayor's leave and said that it was to start Monday at midnight.
Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young is in line to take over temporarily as mayor.
The Baltimore City charter specifies that the City Council president takes on the mayor's responsibilities if she is temporarily unable to fulfill them. "In case of, and during, sickness, temporary disqualification or necessary absence of the Mayor, the President of the City Council shall be ex officio Mayor of the City," the charter reads.
The scandal over the books _ a series featuring a young girl named Healthy Holly aimed at promoting exercise and good diet _ has quickly overtaken the mayor. A no-bid deal with the University of Maryland Medical System was first reported by The Baltimore Sun last month.
Under the deal, the medical system paid Pugh $500,000 for copies of the books while she served on its board. UMMS paid $100,000 in each of five transactions in 2012, 2013, 2015, 2017 and 2018 to purchase 20,000 copies of her self-published books at $5 per book. Pugh was among nine members of the 30-person UMMS board that had contracts or other business deals with the medical system. Pugh and two other board members have resigned. Several others were placed on leave.
On Monday, the Sun reported that health insurer Kaiser Permanente also paid Pugh more than $100,000 to purchase copies of her books from 2015 to 2018. In September 2017, the city's spending board, which Pugh sits on and controls, awarded Kaiser a $48 million contract to provide health insurance to city employees from 2018 through 2020, with options to renew. After the Sun reported the Kaiser purchase, State Comptroller Peter Franchot called on Pugh to resign and Gov. Larry Hogan asked the office of the state prosecutor to begin a criminal investigation of the allegations against Pugh.
Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke said it was right for Pugh to step aside for now.
"It's a tsunami here and we're drowning," Clarke said. "We need to survive as a city and to thrive."
Even as Pugh resigned her seat on the UMMS board and handed back $100,000 of the book payments, she was defiant. She issued a statement saying she was proud of the books and the message they were aimed at sharing, and she called inquiries into the UMMS deal a "witch hunt."
But Thursday, she held a news conference at City Hall apologizing for it.
"In hindsight, this arrangement with the University of Maryland Medical System was a regrettable mistake," she said.
At the news conference, she made no mention of other buyers of the books. She also acknowledged that 20,000 books for which UMMS paid her $100,000 in fiscal 2017 had been "delayed" and were only now being produced.
Pugh, a veteran of almost two decades in Baltimore politics, secured the mayoralty by winning the 2016 Democratic primary, taking 37 percent of the vote to defeat a dozen other hopefuls. She is paid $185,000 as mayor.
Pugh's chief rival in that election was former Mayor Sheila Dixon, who sought her old job back after being forced to resign after being convicted of embezzling gift cards for the poor.
Pugh, 69, is from Pennsylvania and came to Baltimore to attend Morgan State University. She was elected to office as a member of the City Council in 1999. She served five years before winning a seat in the House of Delegates in 2005. In 2007, she began serving in the state Senate, rising to the post of majority leader in 2015. She was sworn in as Baltimore's mayor in December 2016.
