The mayor can wear whatever brand of shoes she wants. And suits, for that matter. She can evenwear pantsuits. Furs. Who cares. What matters is not what she charges on her personal credit cards but how she discharges her power. She said so herself.
In her inaugural address last year, she pledged to be “a mayor you can be proud of.”
That does not mean asking taxpayers to distinguish between the legal definition of contractor and subcontractor. It means disclosing gifts. All gifts, even if some of them might be a little embarrassing or extravagant like a fur coat, or reveal a relationship she would rather keep “personal.”
She owes the citizens of Baltimore more than technical ethics. She owes us character.
If she is so humbled by citizens? faith in her as she mentioned in that first address, she must show it. Every day. She does not get to take long weekends from the law or from personal responsibility. Even if ? even if ? everybody before her and behind her was doing the same thing.
She is a woman of faith. She knows the difference between legalism and fulfilling the spirit of the law. She is also a mother. And every good mother has asked her children this question in response to the universal “everybody has it” or “everybody is doing it” plea: “If everybody told you to jump off a bridge, would you?”
She should know better. But she doesn?t.
This failure to disclose is not a first-timer?s mistake.
She somehow failed to mention her sister?s job at Utech, a city contractor, when pushing to direct money its way while president of the City Council.
This is a pattern. A bad one. She needs to come clean, now. It does not matter that the board of ethics “cleared” her of any impropriety in regard to Utech even though the law clearly states city officials and employees must recuse themselves from matters affecting a close relative. Nor can her legal team successfully weasel her out of responsibility to disclose gifts from ex-lover and city contractor Ronald Lipscomb.
Her deception overshadows her work. And it will until she remits what she omitted ? all of it. Not just the dribs and drabs ferreting media sleuths and court records have already revealed.
One way to prevent this from happening again is to make public, as Councilwoman Belinda Conaway, D-7 proposes, all city payments to contractors and vendors on a city Web site. This would not force compliance to ethics rules, but it would make certain relationships harder to hide.
She may legally survive this investigation without coming clean. But refusing to do so will undermine her moral authority and divert her focus ? and the media?s ? from cutting crime and improving schools to what labels hang in her closet and how they got there.
