Investigators with the State Prosecutor's Office found that Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon made $13,800 in "unexplained cash" deposits in a six-week period during the spring of 2004, one of many details to emerge in a mammoth court filing that raises questions about Dixon's financial dealings as City Council president.
Ronald H. Lipscomb, a former Dixon boyfriend, provided about $4,000 of the sum, but investigators do not know the source of the rest of it, a fact that prompted one member of a grand jury investigating the mayor to ask: "Does the City Council President make that kind of money?" according to a transcript of one proceeding.
Investigators said the cash was "over and above" the $80,000 annual salary she made at the time.
Normally secret accounts of testimony given by Lipscomb, another person who was a close aide to Dixon and a state prosecutor's investigator before the grand jury were included as part of a motion the prosecutor's office filed to counter an effort by the mayor to dismiss perjury and theft charges against her.
The transcripts depict a "shopaholic" - as the aide characterized her - who couldn't pay for her extravagances and sought help from Lipscomb, a developer who had business before the City Council at the time.
Dixon would not comment yesterday, but her attorney, Arnold M. Weiner, sought to cast doubt on the prosecutor's suspicions: "What appears to be unexplained to the state prosecutor is fully explained to us." He would not elaborate.
The court filing includes a recounting of testimony from the mayor's bodyguard, Howard Dixon, who is no relation to her, describing what he said was her overspending and includes personal details about the lengths Lipscomb went to, according to the bodyguard, to conceal from his wife his affair with Dixon.
State prosecutors have been investigating Dixon since March 2006 when, as City Council president, she scolded officials from Comcast Corp. and pressed them to direct more work to minority-owned firms like the one that employed her sister.
Since it began, the probe has yielded four guilty pleas and charges have been filed against a city councilwoman. Dixon was indicted on perjury counts accusing her of failing to report on her city ethics form the gifts from Lipscomb and a theft count that maintains she spent gift cards intended for the poor.
