The public has not heard from Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh in a month. The acting mayor, Bernard C. “Jack” Young, who’s in Detroit for a conference, hasn’t so much as gotten a phone call from her in weeks. All we know about her status and intentions comes from a private attorney, Steven Silverman, and now he’s telling us that at 3:30 today in his office — not the mayor’s residence, not City Hall — he will inform Baltimore of who its mayor will be. Whether Ms. Pugh will even be in the room is a mystery.
We find this troubling, not because we are upset at the signs suggesting she plans to resign (we called for that weeks ago), but because a matter this important needs to be handled the right way. The last thing of substance Mr. Silverman told the city was that the mayor was not sufficiently “lucid” — an astonishing word — to make a decision about whether to resign. Unless the public is able to see and ask questions of Ms. Pugh, an elected official, how are we to know that she is sufficiently “lucid” now? How do we know she is really making this decision for herself?