Suspicions grow as Baltimore mayor's leave drags on

BALTIMORE (AP) — Viewers of Baltimore newscasts are getting used to seeing images of embattled Mayor Catherine Pugh's lawyer pulling up to her three-story house and vanishing inside. He later insists that her health is too fragile for her to think clearly enough to make decisions about the future.

But after a month on paid leave from her $185,000 job as the city's No. 1 official, her lawyer's cryptic comments about the mayor's open-ended retreat inside her home in the city are straining the credulity of some Baltimore taxpayers. The scandal isn't going away, leaving her politically vulnerable and deeply isolated.

"I think she's in a tough place and she's hiding at home trying to save face," city resident Rachel Richardson said early Wednesday during a break cleaning streets in Baltimore's bustling downtown. "I definitely know I can't believe what I'm hearing anymore."

While the first-term Democratic mayor still has some supporters with a wait-and-see attitude, numerous citizens who had been willing to give Pugh the benefit of the doubt now perceive her indefinite leave with suspicion. It's something her main attorney, Steven Silverman, is acutely aware of as calls for her resignation accumulate.

"It's very hard when someone is not able to think clearly and feel physically up to task to make major decisions such as this. I know where her heart is: She's a soulful person, she cares deeply about the city despite what some people think right now," Silverman said recently after re-emerging from Pugh's home where he says they've been discussing her "options."

Some are asking why Pugh isn't hospitalized, if she's so ill that she can't think "lucidly," as Silverman stated last week. Silverman has said the ailing mayor suffered a bout of pneumonia followed by bronchitis and is also "extremely emotionally distraught."

Some...