Times are so tough in Baltimore that Sheila Dixon was shamed into giving at least part of her 2.5 percent pay raise to charity.
But apparently not so tough that the city can't spend a total of $120,000 a year on two "special assistants" to the mayor and consider giving each of them 5 percent raises.
One of them is a potential witness in the state prosecutor's case against Dixon.
Today the Board of Estimates will consider raises for Bobby Potts and Howard Dixon, two retired city police officers who essentially serve as the mayor's body men. They do not act as the mayor's drivers or security guards, duties performed by current cops. Howard Dixon (no, he's not related to the mayor) and Potts escort the mayor to meetings and public events, supervise maintenance of the mayoral SUV and advise her on public safety issues, according to the board's agenda.
The raises would bring their salaries to $60,566 a year. The board would have to waive a salary cap normally imposed on retirees, something it has done for the men in the past.
In January 2008, state prosecutors subpoenaed Howard Dixon in their City Hall corruption probe.
Dixon spokesman Scott Peterson said the mayor would abstain from the vote. So you know it's all on the up-and-up.
With friends like these ...
Michael Phelps really knows how to pick his pals.
I speak not of the hearty University of South Carolina partiers who in early November apparently furnished him with bong, weed and - after one of them snapped and sold his photo - an international dope flap.
Nor do I refer to Caroline Pal, the over-tattooed, underdressed Vegas cocktail waitress Phelps took home to Mom for Thanksgiving. (In retrospect, I'll bet Debbie Phelps is wishing he'd settled down with the gal a few weeks earlier.)
No, the friends who've really let Michael Phelps down are his agents at Octagon, the marketing Brain Trust that offered a British tabloid "extraordinary incentives" to kill the bong story, according to the paper, News of the World.
Octagon spokesman Clifford Bloxham "offered us an extraordinary deal not to publish our story, saying Phelps would become our columnist for three years, host events and get his sponsors to advertise with us," the paper reported. "In return, he asked that we kill Phelps' bong picture.
"Bloxham said: 'It's seeing if something potentially very negative for Michael could turn into something very positive for the News of the World.' "
