If I was a book collector and had $100,000 to spend, what should I spend it on?
Let’s see. For that money, I could maybe get two copies of the UK first of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Or maybe just one.
Or I could be like this guy, who paid $100,000 for one book from “Healthy Holly LLC”.
Should I even mention that this guy does business with the city of Baltimore? And that “Healthy Holly LLC” is the mayor’s publishing company?
Grant’s firm has long done business with the city. And in December last year, Pugh voted as a member of the city’s spending board to approve a contract with the company to finance capital projects. The value of the contract will depend on what the city uses it to buy.
It doesn’t sound as interesting as Harry Potter, but it may be equally rare:
Pugh was paid $500,000 by the University of Maryland Medical System during a time when she was a state senator and then mayor — and sat on the hospital network’s board of directors. That money was supposed to buy 100,000 “Healthy Holly” books for the city’s schoolchildren in five installments from 2011 to 2018. The “Herbie” book was the second installment.
But even after days of front-page headlines, no one has stepped forward to account for all the books. UMMS said through a spokesman that “production and distribution of the books was managed by Healthy Holly LLC,” Pugh’s book company.
Bonus: the mayor has an “upscale second hand boutique” that’s been selling Groupons. (Groupons? Those are still a thing?) But when a reporter bought one and went to visit yesterday afternoon…
…the door of the Pigtown boutique was locked, and two women who entered the building Wednesday afternoon declined to answer a reporter’s questions or to allow entrance into the shop.
Getting back to the books, it’s a shame nobody can find them: Lawrence has a birthday coming up, and he’s a connoisseur of books published by political hacks to get money under the table.