Besieged Baltimore mayor quits
Acting Mayor Bernard “Jack” Young automatically becomes the permanent mayor.
Citing deteriorating health following a bout of pneumonia, Pugh took paid leave on April 1 and hasn’t been seen in public since. The 69-year-old abruptly retreated to her home the day Gov. Larry Hogan asked the state prosecutor to investigate public corruption accusations against her.
The scandal erupted when it came to light that the University of Maryland Medical System, one of the state’s largest private employers, paid Pugh $500,000 for 100,000 copies of her children’s books. There was no contract, and the hospital network described some of the purchases as “grants” in federal filings.
Before she became mayor, Pugh once sat on a state Senate committee that funded the major health network. She started serving on the system’s board in 2001. Pugh was not the only one who benefited: Roughly one-third of the system’s board members received compensation through the medical system’s arrangements with their businesses. As she became the public face of the scandal, she stepped down from the board and returned her most recent $100,000 payment.
Pressure on Pugh to resign ratcheted up dramatically after Kaiser Permanente disclosed that it paid her limited liability company about $114,000 between 2015 and 2018 for roughly 20,000 copies of her illustrated books. Pugh 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. When asked who Kaiser bought the books from, company spokesman Scott Lusk said: “We purchased the books from Healthy Holly, LLC.” That is Pugh’s company.
Others then came forward, including Maryland financier J.P. Grant. He acknowledged writing a roughly $100,000 check to buy Pugh’s “Health Holly” books but insisted he expected nothing in return.