It was another "ah, Baltimore" moment. Ever get those? You get exasperated by some bureaucratic runaround at City Hall, and you sigh and steam and maybe that vein on your forehead starts to throb. But after a while, you learn to just surrender - "ah, Baltimore" - and accept you're going to have dial one more number or go to one other office or just do without whatever it is you thought you needed.
That parking ticket I successfully fought but that popped up every time I had to renew my car registration? "Ah, Baltimore." That number in the phone book I called to ask about the new single-stream recycling program that instead plays a message touting the "new" blue-bag program that it had replaced? "Ah, Baltimore."
That's what I thought yesterday during one of the points defense attorney Arnold Weiner made during his bravura opening arguments in the case of The State of Maryland v. Sheila Ann Dixon. No, the trial hasn't actually started - the mayor was only indicted yesterday - but with the media before him as a sort of practice jury, Weiner began trying the case anyway, complete with exhibits.
Using a red marker to underline operative words in the city's ethics ordinance, Weiner argued that developer Ronald Lipscomb - indicted earlier this week on an accusation of bribing a city councilwoman - didn't fit the definition of someone doing business with the city.
No, Lipscomb was not doing business with the city, Weiner said, because the ethics code requires that the city maintain a list of all entities doing business with the city and ... the city does not maintain such a list.
Ah, Baltimore.
Lipscomb is delicately referred to in the indictment of Dixon as Developer A, masking his identity to just about no one who has followed the saga of Sheiron - or should we Brangelinize them as Dixcomb? - and that fleeting affair that torridly mixed tax credits with fur coats, days at the Board of Estimates and nights at the Ritz.
And now, gift cards.
Yes, the indictment handed up by the grand jury yesterday brought yet another form of economic stimulus to the story: Dixon is charged with the theft of gift cards that she solicited from Developers A and B - another country heard from! - for the "needy" of the city. To anyone who heard Dixon defend her recent and surreptitiously enacted pay raise - she's a single mom with a kid in college - it will come as no surprise that, according to the state prosecutor, she apparently counts herself in this group.
