Prosecutors are investigating whether Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon received thousands of dollars in gifts - including fur coats - from a prominent developer whose projects benefited from tax breaks and zoning changes she supported as City Council president, a document obtained by The Sun shows.
Court records, drafted by the state prosecutor's office in November, indicate that Dixon also went on lavish trips to Boston, the Bahamas, Chicago and Colorado with the developer, Ronald H. Lipscomb. In one instance, the two left Baltimore for New York by train hours after she had voted to approve a tax break for one of his company's largest projects.
Yesterday, a Baltimore City grand jury began calling witnesses in the case to testify in a courthouse a block from City Hall.
FOR THE RECORD - Articles in Sunday's and yesterday's editions of The Sun about the state prosecutor's investigation of Mayor Sheila Dixon misspelled the name of attorney Gerard P. Martin.
The Sun regrets the error.
The documents, presented by prosecutors to a Baltimore County District Court, offer the most detailed accounting yet of the two-year investigation into City Hall spending and provide new information about possible ethical lapses that occurred when Dixon was City Council president.
After receiving questions from The Sun yesterday, Dixon and Lipscomb acknowledged publicly for the first time that they had had a relationship and exchanged gifts, but both denied that the relationship played any role in projects that Dixon helped advance on the City Council and the Board of Estimates.
"In late 2003 and early 2004, I had a personal relationship with Ron Lipscomb," Dixon said in a statement. "We were both separated from our respective spouses at the time, we traveled together and exchanged gifts on special occasions. Our brief relationship was personal, and it did not influence my decisions related to matters of city government."
Under penalty of perjury, the city ethics law requires elected officials to report gifts from people who benefit from city business. Dixon has not reported any gifts from Lipscomb in at least the past seven years. His company, Doracon Contracting, has been involved in several high-profile developments in Baltimore, including those that have received financial incentives from the city. Lipscomb, for instance, is involved in the major development of Harbor East and in the revitalization in East Baltimore near Johns Hopkins Hospital.
