Mayor enjoys fruits – and flowers, cakes – of her labor

Flowers flowed into City Hall during Mayor Catherine Pugh’s first year in office — along with fruit baskets and a trio of cakes from a prominent local investor.

Pugh detailed the gifts in her annual financial disclosure, a tool designed to let the public know about any conflicts of interest city officials might have.

The forms, required to be filed by April 30 each year, ask officials to disclose eight kinds of information: Ownership of real estate, ownership of business entities, business with the city, gifts, debts, employment of family members, other sources of income and “any additional information.”

Pugh filed a 14-page report, checking off five of those categories. There were few updates to her disclosure. The mayor continues to own a pair of publishing-related businesses as well as a 60 percent stake in a Pigtown boutique she runs with Comptroller Joan Pratt.

The papers detail the gifts the mayor’s office accepted, and flowers were the gift of choice. The mayor received 11 plants or bouquets, with an estimated value of $587.

The first arrived in February 2017 from the Baltimore Teachers Network, some roses showed up the next day. In April, Glen Middleton Jr. sent a spathiphyllum; two months later, his father sent a peace lily — a different name for the same thing. (Middleton is the son of City Councilwoman Sharon Middleton. He’s a drone company official and city community liaison. His father is a top official in a government employees union.)

More flowers came in June, July, August and October, including more from the Baltimore Teachers Network. Just before Christmas, a traditional poinsettia arrived from H&S Properties Development Corp., the developer of Harbor East.

The mayor’s office also received an estimated $105 in fruit.

But it was gifts from investor J.P. Grant that might have elicited the most excitement from the mayor’s staff: Two cakes came the week of Thanksgiving and another the week of Christmas, $140 worth in all.