The Baltimore Sun is reporting this afternoon that former Chestertown Council member Mabel Mumford-Pautz has pleaded guilty to felony theft while serving as treasurer of the Eastern Shore chapter of the Maryland Municipal League.
State Prosecutor Emmet Davitt announced 82-year-old Mabel Mumford-Pautz’ plea on Wednesday.
Davitt says Mumford-Pautz paid nearly $45,000 in restitution at sentencing and Judge Keith Baynes gave her a suspended five-year prison sentence and three years’ probation.
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Debra Blanchfield says
Quoted from Baltimore Sun article dated 4/4/15:
Laura Mitchell, the current treasurer of the Eastern Shore chapter, said she alerted Hancock to spending irregularities. She said she found that Mumford-Pautz, who was treasurer for six years, had written checks to herself.
Mumford-Pautz lost her seat on the Chestertown City Council in 2013. She then left her position with the Eastern Shore chapter of the league.
She was praised at her final council meeting for her 32 years of service, according to the minutes of the meeting. The council agreed to name a new park after her and gave her a ceremonial key to the city.
She said she had been honored to have once served as the grand marshal for Chestertown’s annual tea party parade but that her “proudest moments were carrying the Chestertown flag at the opening of the [Maryland Municipal League] conference each year,” according to the minutes.
Mumford-Pautz also said that she had been made a “life member” of the Eastern Shore chapter of the league and wanted to re-establish a scholarship through the group that would help students studying for careers in political science or government.
“She said that anyone wishing to make a donation should send checks to her marked ‘ESAM’ and she would start the fund up again,” according to the minutes of her final council meeting on Dec. 16, 2013.
Mitchell, vice president of Salisbury’s City Council, said Mumford-Pautz was made a lifetime member but that no scholarship fund was established.
chris willson says
quoted from channel 47 ABC:
The way the state is handling Mumford-Pautz’ case is also raising questions. According to court records, her charges were filed in Kent County Circuit Court where her son is the current clerk. 47 ABC reached out to courthouse staff about the charging documents, and they say her file is not in their office. The Maryland State Prosecutor, who filed the charges against Mumford-Pautz, would not comment to 47 ABC or explain where the file is. That prosecutor was appointed while Doug Gansler was the Attorney General, who is now representing Mumford-Pautz as her defense attorney.
quote from the Baltimore Sun:
When the Maryland state prosecutor’s office files charges against a public or political party official, it typically issues a news release. But it took Davitt more than two weeks to announce a March 25 theft charge filed in Kent County against a former Chestertown City Council member — Mabel Mumford-Pautz, who has hired former Attorney General Douglas Gansler, a fellow Democrat, as her attorney.
Davitt — whose position is independent — once worked for Gansler in the attorney general’s office. In addition, Mumford-Pautz’s son, Mark L. Mumford, has been the Democratic Kent County Circuit Court clerk for 25 years.
Even though the case was displayed in online court records as being filed in Kent County on March 25, Davitt had not announced it and Mumford said it did not exist in that county
This case was mishandled and no one in Kent County seems interested in the facts of this crime.
When the Maryland state prosecutor’s office files charges against a public or political party official, it typically issues a news release.