In her hours of ongoing dishonor and humiliation, CatherinePugh now awaits sentencing for her “Healthy Holly” scam and the enormous moneyshe bilked from a bunch of enabling chumps who should have known better.
Shame, shame, shame.
Shame on the former mayor of Baltimore for her crime and forviolating the trust so many people invested in her, and shame on her for onceagain bringing national ridicule and disgrace upon this city.
OK, did we make that clear enough?
If not, then heed the words of the sentencing memorandumfiled by federal prosecutors last week: “Pugh’s seven-year scheme to defraud,multiple years of tax evasion, election fraud, and attempted cover-ups,including brazen lies to the public, clearly establishes the deliberatenesswith which she pursued financial and political gain without a second thoughtabout how it was harming the public’s trust.”
Agreed, she did some bad, greedy, selfish things, and shedeserves punishment. We’re not arguing against this, but we’re arguing againstmindlessness.
We now have these federal prosecutors calling for her to serve nearly five years behind bars. This for a nearly 70-year-old woman whose previous record includes no crime but plenty of public service.
Pugh’s defense attorneys say five years is too much. Theysuggest a year and a day.
I suggest either way is a waste of a life and of ahealthier, smarter possibility.
This is a woman who could overcome the bad in her life bydoing some good. She goes to federal prison, and who does this help?
She goes to a live-in juvenile facility or a series of live-infacilities, as a counselor or teacher at places where she would stay 24 hours aday during her punishment time. Maybe she not only pays her debt to society, butfinds some personal redemption.
And best of all, maybe she helps change some kids’ liveswhile she’s there.
The scam involving “Healthy Holly” — including the bigmoney she got from the University of Maryland Medical System while she servedon its board — was criminal. But the original instinct to write a book aboutchildren’s health came from a better place in her heart.
This is a woman who’s always talked movingly about thewasted lives of children. I can recall conversations with her when she talkedabout being in Israel and studying the kibbutzsystem, and wondering if that might be an answer to some of Baltimore’schildren who have so little family solidarity in their lives.
You think we’re punishing Catherine Pugh by sending her toprison? She’s already lost everything.Once, she walked with political royalty. Now, she’s a cautionary tale whichwill be told for the rest of her long, long nights.
She still has good stuff to offer this world, and there arecountless lost children hungry for the kind of guidance she could offer.
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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