Baltimore mayor says her $500K book deal was a ‘mistake’
Baltimore’s mayor on Thursday described a lucrative arrangement to sell her self-published children’s books to a university-based health care system as a “regrettable mistake” and offered apologies for “any lack of confidence or disappointment” citizens and colleagues may be feeling.
At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Catherine Pugh provided five pages of paperwork, asserting they detail production and various deliveries of her “Healthy Holly” books to Baltimore’s school system. She also provided a copy of a January 2011 letter to the district’s chief academic officer describing a donation of 20,000 copies of “Health Holly: Exercising is Fun!”
Since 2011, Pugh received $500,000 selling her illustrated paperback series to the University of Maryland Medical System, a $4 billion hospital network. Pugh sat on the medical system’s board of directors for about 18 years.