It would be more informative and credible Laura Vozzella's gossip column citing unnamed reliable sources who say incoming Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake is behind an effort to have Councilman Bill Cole succeed her actually included any verifiable facts ("Developer B on council president's race: Who, me?" Jan. 28). Instead she seems to want to smear not only the incoming mayor by suggesting she is conspiring with developers and old Dixon cronies, the governor and his brothers for having the audacity to be involved in Baltimore politics and Councilman Cole for -- well, that is unclear.

As far as I can tell she hasn't discovered some criminal conspiracy, or much of anything else, save some chatter of City Hall operatives with undisclosed agendas.

Her gratuitous muckracking is the stuff that makes public service in this city so unappealing to many of our best and brightest.

H. Alexander Robinson