Greed, poor judgment at heart of Baltimore mayor’s fall; she remains defiant

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Greed at the heart of Baltimore mayor’s fall

BALTIMORE — Sheila Dixon reveled in the long hours and difficult decisions that came with being mayor, but episodes of greed and bad judgment ultimately doomed her political career.

For a former elementary school teacher who toiled on City Council for two decades, Baltimore’s top job was a culmination of her life’s work — and by most accounts, she did it well. She won praise for curbing violence in a notoriously dangerous city.

But questions about her ethics never went away. As City Council president, she was criticized for holding a part-time second job with the state. As mayor, she was dogged by accusations that she was a shopaholic who lied about gifts from developers.

Ultimately, a pile of $25 Best Buy gift cards contributed to her downfall.

On Wednesday, Dixon, 56, announced her resignation following a plea deal involving a perjury charge and an earlier misdemeanor conviction for embezzling the gift cards, which had been donated to the city for needy families.

While she could have faced prison time if convicted of perjury, legal experts said that was unlikely. She gave up her job to save her city pension and preserve the possibility of working for the city or state again.

She will receive probation before judgment, meaning her convictions can be erased. Her legacy is irreparably damaged.

She remained defiant in an interview Thursday, saying jurors who convicted her “got very confused” and claiming the reasons for her departure were “clearly more complex” than her personal wrongdoing.

“Information gets out because other people dislike you or like you. I had a lot of enemies here,” Dixon told The Associated Press. “If I was a different kind of public official, I could expose a lot of people, but it’s not my forte.”

When Dixon, a Democrat, became mayor in 2007, the investigation that led to her downfall was already under way. The probe was sparked by The Baltimore Sun’s reports that Dixon, then the City Council president, tried to steer city business to a company that employed her sister.

Federal prosecutors investigated, but didn’t file charges. State Prosecutor Robert A. Rohrbaugh took over and stumbled upon the gift cards. City Hall, it was alleged, was awash in gift cards to stores such as Best Buy and Target that were donated by developers to hand out to the poor, but not all of them were making it to their intended recipients.

Throughout the probe, Dixon insisted she had done nothing wrong.

Meanwhile, she surpassed the expectations of those who called her unpolished and hot-tempered. Her most infamous episode occurred in 1991, when she waved her shoe during a racially charged debate over council redistricting, telling a white colleague that the “shoe was on the other foot.”

When she took over as mayor for the popular and charismatic Gov. Martin O’Malley, many worried the city would regress. But Dixon quickly became known for hiring capable people.

On public safety — always the No. 1 issue because of the city’s persistently high homicide rate — Dixon had a better record than her predecessor. She brought stability to the police department, and homicides dropped to totals not seen since the late 1980s.

After the January 2009 indictment, however, Dixon’s administration stalled. President Barack Obama snubbed her during a preinaugural visit, not mentioning her name during a speech across from City Hall.

Her shortcomings typically revolved around finances. When she became City Council president in 1999, an ethics commission advised her to step down from a part-time state government job, saying it raised potential conflicts of interest. Dixon kept it for another two years.

As mayor, she defended pay raises for the city’s top officials — including herself — during a budget crunch. She later pledged to donate the $3,700 to charity.

Her longtime driver, Howard Dixon, described the mayor in grand jury testimony as a “shopaholic” who “overspent.” He said she once gave him $4,000 in cash to pay her American Express bill. Prosecutors were unable to determine who gave her the money.

The perjury plea involved thousands of dollars in gifts she got as council president from her former boyfriend, developer Ronald H. Lipscomb, who prosecutors said showered her with cash, fur coats and travel. She did not report some of the gifts as required, and Dixon repeatedly insisted that everything he gave her was personal.

The gift cards she was convicted of embezzling — about $500 in total — came from a different developer.

Money was even a decisive factor in her plea, according to her attorney, Arnold M. Weiner. She can keep her pension, worth at least $83,000, and begin drawing from it upon leaving office in February.

Dixon could run for office after her probation, which could end after two years if she completes 500 hours of community services and donates $45,000 to charity. But her prospects are limited, said Donald F. Norris, chairman of the public policy department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“Even within the city of Baltimore, if she chooses to run again, she’s going to have to run within a district where her popularity is enough to overcome her negative deficit as a result of the convictions,” he said.

Anthony McCarthy, Dixon’s former spokesman and adviser, said if it weren’t for the prosecutor’s probe, she would have been mayor for many years.

“I think Sheila Dixon would have run for re-election, been re-elected, and really been the mayor of the city of Baltimore for as long as she wanted to be,” McCarthy said.