A Baltimore city councilwoman lost her position at the helm of a powerful committee Monday after she pleaded no contest to a campaign-finance violation related to her work on the panel.
Council President Bernard C. "Jack" Young announced Monday night that he was removing Helen Holton, an accountant who represents a portion of Southwest Baltimore, as chair of the taxation and finance committee.
The move came hours after her plea to misdemeanor charges that she asked two developers to pay for a $12,500 poll, exceeding limits on political donations and circumventing campaign finance laws. As head of the committee, Holton had helped orchestrate tax breaks for the developers, bakery magnate John Paterakis Sr. and Ronald H. Lipscomb.
Holton, a Democrat, received probation before judgment under a plea deal announced in Baltimore Circuit Court on Monday. She must pay a $2,500 fine and serve one year of unsupervised probation. A related — and more serious — bribery charge remains unresolved.
The charges arose from the same three-year corruption probe that ensnared former Mayor Sheila Dixon and lead to her resignation from office in February.
"As elected representatives…we are held to the highest ethical standards," said Young as he announced the move Monday evening. "I take very seriously my duty to honor the public's trust in the city's legislative branch."
Holton's plea comes about 10 months after Dixon struck an agreement that allowed her to leave office while keeping her pension after a jury found her guilty of an embezzlement charge, and arrives as Baltimore's 2011 mayor and council elections draw closer.
Matthew Crenson, a political science professor emeritus at the Johns Hopkins University, said that voters are already so cynical that it was unlikely that Holton's plea would further tarnish perceptions of local politics.
"The level of mistrust in government is so high that people take it for granted that public officials are going to make mistakes and do things that are unethical or illegal," Crenson said.
Holton and Young had been allies during a rancorous budget struggle earlier this year.
Holton, who was sitting in the council chambers during Young's announcement, did not address the decision during the meeting and declined to answers questions afterward.
Earlier in the day, as she stepped out of the courthouse, Holton said, "I will continue to serve on the City Council and serve my community to the best of my ability to move the city forward."
When Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake was council president, she stripped Holton of the committee chair position after the councilwoman was indicted and briefly reinstated her when some of the charges were dropped. Young named her to head the committee when he was voted council president earlier this year.
Council members said they backed Young's Monday decision, which removed Holton from the committee entirely.
"I think the president had no choice," said Councilwoman Mary Pat Clarke. "On a fiscal committee, leadership has to be above reproach."
Councilman William H. Cole IV, who vied for the council presidency and was ousted as head of the taxation committee when Young took the top spot, said the plea put Young in a "tough position."
"It's a challenging time for all of us," Cole said.
The no-contest plea is rare and is considered neither an admission nor denial of guilt, said Andrew I. Alperstein, a defense attorney and former prosecutor who is not involved in Holton's case.
The deal is a "smart move for Holton and her lawyers," since receiving probation before judgment means that she has not been convicted of a crime, he said. And the case could be expunged if she has no further convictions or charges within three years after her probation ends, he said.
According to a statement of facts read by Assistant State Prosecutor Shelly S. Glenn, Holton asked Paterakis and Lipscomb to pay $12,500 to a pollster during her 2007 re-election campaign.
State law allows donors to give no more than $4,000 to a candidate during a four-year election cycle. Holton directed the developers to pay the pollster directly, circumventing her campaign's finance committee, which is also a violation of state law.
The state's highest court is considering whether related bribery charges were rightly dismissed. As chairwoman of the council's taxation and finance committee, she shepherded through tax breaks for their Harbor East project.
Judge Dennis M. Sweeney dismissed the charges because, under state law, elected officeholders' official acts cannot be used as evidence against them. The Court of Special Appeals, the state's second highest court, sided with Sweeney. Prosecutors have appealed that decision to the Court of Appeals.
Deputy State Prosecutor Thomas M. McDonough said outside the courthouse Monday that the campaign finance violation was a "relatively minor charge."
"The real case and the real issues here are in the case that is on appeal," he said.
