BALTIMORE _ Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on Friday announced that City Solicitor George A. Nilson will no longer lead the city's law department.
Nilson is being replaced by Deputy Solicitor David Ralph, who will serve as interim city solicitor, the mayor said.
"The Mayor thanks Mr. Nilson for his dedicated service to the City of Baltimore and wishes him well in his future endeavor," a statement from the mayor's office said. Nilson had been Baltimore's top lawyer since 2007. He was paid $166,500 annually.
The news came one day after Baltimore officials announced they had terminated a contract with an attorney hired by Nilson accused of having neo-Nazi ties.
The Rawlings-Blake administration said it had fired Glen Keith Allen, 65, who had worked for years at the DLA Piper law firm until retiring in January. Allen had been working for the city since February as contract employee handling complex litigation. The city began investigating Allen's background after the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that he had a history of supporting the neo-Nazi National Alliance.
In an interview with The Baltimore Sun, Allen said he was a casual member of the group in the late 1980s and early 1990s but had concluded "emphatically that that was a huge mistake."
A native of Queens in New York, Nilson, 74, graduated from Yale law school. He served as second-in-command in the Maryland Attorney General's Office in the 1970s and 1980s.
In 1986, he led an effort to reform campaign laws under former Gov. Harry Hughes. Nilson chaired a commission that proposed limiting the contributions of political action committees and barring lobbyists from raising money for state lawmakers.
Lester Davis, a spokesman for City Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young, said Young "wishes Mr. Nilson the best."
"He respects the mayor's authority to make hiring decisions within her agency," Davis said.
City Councilman Robert W. Curran said he'd "always had a good impression of him, and a good working relationship with him."
"I'm sorry he had to leave under these circumstances," Curran said. "I wish David Ralph the best. I just wish George had done better vetting."
