Ambitiously, the author (and Mayor) with a captive audience, approved the purchase! There can be little doubt that former Mayor of Baltimore Catherine Pugh is a bright and creative person. However, her lapse of ethics resulted in the following statement a few brief weeks ago, as read by her lawyer:
“Today I am submitting my written resignation to the Baltimore City Council. I am sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of the city of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor.”
The Price of Unethical Behavior
Catherine Pugh was forced to resign after the Baltimore City Council came down on her for being, perhaps, overly ambitious. While a member of the UMMS hospital board, Pugh approved a huge purchase of children’s books for the University of Maryland Medical System and other medical and bureaucratic groups. The problem was that she was the author of “Healthy Holly,” and she benefitted financially from the transaction of the self-published book.
The sale of these thousands of books looked highly suspicious from the beginning and caused Maryland Republican Gov. Larry Hogan to write to the Office of the State Prosecutor. The governor requested an investigation into the sales of Pugh’s books.
When the investigation was announced. Catherine Pugh’s spokesperson told the media she was ill and in bed with pneumonia and that she could not be reached.
The book deal Pugh arranged with the medical system, was not small potatoes. The transaction was for $500,000 for the order of 100,000 books. In addition to the UMMS sale, there was an additional $114,000 sale from Kaiser Permanente for 10,000 books and from the Associated Black Charities for $80,000 for about 10,000 copies. The “Charities” are publicly funded. As it became apparent that she had acted inappropriately, she returned $100,000 to the hospital system and then left the hospital board in addition to resigning as mayor.
She Knew – The Author (and Mayor) with a Captive Audience
As a hospital board member as well as mayor, there was no doubt that Catherine Pugh was well aware and fully understood she was violating the ethics rules. As a board member, she was undoubtedly familiar with ethical threats to the system before she attempted to violate the rules herself.
The familiarity she had with the board and hospital system allowed her to see an opportunity to sell large quantities of her own books into the system. As a board member, she served as her own oversight. The need was obviously financial with more than a little bit of egotistical thrown in for good measure. After all, a sale of 100,000 copies elevated her to a bestseller status for the book series. We should add that the sale was for 100,000 copies, but in the investigation, it was revealed that only 60,000 were printed. She even cheated on that aspect!
How could she rationalize selling her own book into a hospital system where she was a board member? Perhaps she thought the book had educational and health value, indeed, the message of diet and exercise were not terrible messages, however, there was no bidding process and no attempt to be transparent.
The book was pushed by Pugh into the system and in her mind, it was almost her right to do so. Catherine Pugh is a career politician and she has made a great deal of money. As mayor, her annual salary was $185,000 in addition to money earned for sitting on boards. She didn’t need the book money, but she felt she had a right to do so.
As a career politician, one would think that she had a firm grounding in ethics training. However, with no oversite and little in the way of reinforcement of ethics rules, the system that nurtured her also forgot about her. And it failed us too.
