Guthrie enters plea to theft from union, forfeiting his Harford Council seat
by Bryan P. Sears, Maryland Matters
November 14, 2024
A Harford County councilman pleaded nolo contendere Thursday to one felony charge of stealing funds from a union he led for more than five decades, a plea that county officials said will cost him his seat.
Dion Guthrie, one of two Democrats on the council, entered the plea and was sentenced to probation before judgment and one year of unsupervised probation. A nolo contendere plea allows Guthrie to maintain his innocence while acknowledging prosecutors have enough evidence to obtain a conviction on charges that he stole more than $23,000 from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1501, where he served as president for 52 years.
Following the plea in Baltimore County Circuit Court, an elated Guthrie left the courtroom with family and supporters. Standing in the hallway moments after his hearing, the councilman said the court proceedings would have no effect on his ability to serve.
“I intend to serve my two years and if voters want to remove me, they can remove me two years from now,” Guthrie said, speaking over his attorney Domenic Iamele.
But county officials said Thursday afternoon that the state constitution is clear: An elected official who enters either a guilty or a nolo contendere plea to a criminal charge “shall be removed from the elective office by operation of law and the office shall be deemed vacant.”
“Due to Mr. Guthrie entering a plea of nolo contendere, by operation of law, he is removed from elected office and his Harford County Council seat is deemed vacant as of today,” said a statement from Meaghan G. Alegi, the attorney for the Harford County Council.
Under county law, she said, the vacancy starts a 60 day clock during which the rest of the council has to choose a successor from a list of candidates provided by the county’s Democratic Central Committee.
Harford officials weigh in
Harford County Democratic Central Committee Chair Henry S. “Sandy” Gibbons said that the party was aware of the plea and was waiting for official notification. But he said in a statement that committee members “stand at the ready to perform our role as mandated in the County Charter should a vacancy be formally declared. We thank Councilman Guthrie for his service to the residents of District A and to Harford County.”
Harford Council President Patrick Vincenti (R) was not immediately available for comment Thursday on the court proceedings and Guthrie’s situation. Harford County Executive Bob Cassilly (R), the son of a former county prosecutor, had no immediate comment on Guthrie’s sentencing or council seat.
But Harford Councilmember Jessica Boyles-Tsottles (R) did issue a statement Thursday night in which she said the “integrity of the council and local government is paramount.”
“I support the decision of the Council to remove Mr. Guthrie, for the good of his district and the county at large,” she wrote. “A plea deal and probation before judgment are not satisfactory, and do not engender the faith and confidence of the public that this Council is called upon to hold, at all times.”
Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler (R) issued a statement shortly after the hearing calling for Guthrie to immediately step down.
“In the weeks since these charges came to light, Mr. Guthrie has egregiously claimed that these charges were nothing more than politics and that since this purported theft occurred in Baltimore County, it has no bearing on his service here in Harford County,” Gahler wrote. “Both claims are complete nonsense.
“The Harford County Council is the final fiscal authority that is entrusted with the management of more than a $1 billion Operating and Capital budget and it is imperative that citizens of Harford County have faith, full confidence and trust in our elected members sitting on the Council to appropriately manage these funds,” Gahler’s statement said.
Personal, union use ‘is an ambiguity’
Guthrie was charged last month with one felony count of stealing more than $23,000 from the union he led for more than five decades. His $110,905 annual salary was equivalent to some NASA engineering technicians who were members of his local, and he also got a $1,500 car allowance, $750 in clothing allowances and $1,000 for health insurance each year. The union also paid his cellphone bill.
Other union officials on the board were paid $35 to $100 each month.
The Labor Department said in an eight-page report in May that Guthrie stole more than $15,000 using the union’s American Express credit card, detailing 179 credit card transactions over five years. The report said Guthrie “used the union’s money to support his lifestyle and marketed it to the local officers as it was needed for him to conduct business.”
“Guthrie used his over 50 years in office as experience and knowledge over the executive board to obtain what he wanted,” it said. “Guthrie applied for multiple loans, including the Paycheck Protection Plan loan offered as relief during the pandemic, without the knowledge of the union, to obtain income to keep paying the union’s most expensive bills.”
In some cases, the money was used to pay for plane tickets, timeshare fees in Florida and condo rentals in Ocean City. In each case, the report notes that the union conducted no business or that Guthrie could provide no documentation he had approved conferences on behalf of the union.
The report alleged Guthrie misappropriated another $45,457.07 from a health and welfare fund to pay for personal credit card debt, Bibles, repair work, union meetings and benefits for people who were not eligible to receive them.
Prosecutors, in a criminal complaint, alleged Guthrie stole more than $15,112 from the general fund by using the American Express card for personal expenses, and that another nearly $8,400 was misappropriated from the union’s health and welfare fund “to pay benefits for people not eligible for such as to redirect monies to his personal credit cards and repair work.”
Adam Lippe, chief of the Baltimore County State’s Attorney’s office economic crime unit, who prosecuted the case, said the amounts charged and the settlement agreed to were ultimately determined by the victim — the union.
Guthrie almost immediately agreed to a plea deal. As part of the deal, he paid nearly $23,500 in restitution. He made the payment in advance of a hearing.
After the hearing, Guthrie and Iamele disputed each and every detail in the statement of facts that both sides had agreed upon prior to the hearing.
“Personal use and union use is an ambiguity,” Iamele told reporters. “Part of this case deals with 99-cent charges to Amazon Music or Apple Music. He might have listened to the music in his car. Is that union business or not union business? It comes down to a very ambiguous thing.”
Iamele claimed the payments for vacation rentals and timeshares were for union conferences. But when a reporter pointed out that the federal report said that claim could not be backed up, Guthrie shouted, “That’s a lie.”
Iamele said he provided proof to Baltimore County prosecutors, but said he had no duty to provide it to reporters.
Lippe called Iamele’s presentation a “dossier” and said it contained no receipts or documentation. “I didn’t consider it,” he said.
‘Always a public eulogy’
Inside the courtroom, Guthrie and Iamele at times claimed to take responsibility for the missing money while adamantly disagreeing with the facts in the prosecution’s statement of charges.
“My client does assert a denial of the facts. Were he a younger man, we would be contesting it a little differently,” Iamele told Baltimore County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Robinson Jr. at the outset.
Iamele and Guthrie presented a litany of unfortunate instances from the councilman’s personal battle with colon cancer to the deaths of immediate family members, the marital woes of a daughter, the pandemic and declines in horse racing and abolishment of dog tracks — two industries affecting Guthrie’s union.
Guthrie pointed fingers at office workers and others he said failed him. He claimed the union owed him nearly $40,000 in back vacation pay — which was disputed in the Labor Department report — and later told the judge he would “donate’ that money to the union because “they need it.”
After 15 minutes, it became clear that the judge and prosecutor were unsure how the details related to charges or the sentence at hand.
“Mr. Iamele, you’re doing a very effective job at representing Mr. Guthrie but it is getting close to the point where it might be one day in jail for each additional word,” Robinson deadpanned from the bench.
The defense went on for another 15 minutes.
“This is always a public eulogy when defendants speak,” Lippe said when it was his turn to speak.
He reminded Robinson that the victim “is the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, it has always been the victim in this case.”
Lippe added that Guthrie’s age and health were factors in the resolution of the case.
“I told him if he were a younger man the state wouldn’t have offered this type of plea,” Lippe said. “If he hadn’t had health issues, the state wouldn’t have offered this type of plea. It would have turned out much differently.”
‘Bad things happen to your position’
Following the nolo contendere plea Thursday, Robinson struck the plea and entered a sentence of probation before judgment.
After the hearing Guthrie appeared to peg his claim to retaining his council seat on the fact that Robinson struck the guilty finding as part of the probation before judgment sentence.
“There was no finding of guilt. Let’s focus on that, OK?” he said. “This was a negotiated plea. There was no finding of guilt.”
Lippe later called probation before judgment “a legal oddity” that “allows people to say that they’re not convicted.” But “you can go on the Maryland Judiciary website and see that they are convicted,” Lippe said.
Lawyers for the Harford County Council were present in the Towson courtroom as Guthrie entered his plea. They left the courtroom without comment. As they passed Guthrie and his attorney, the councilman called out to them, “No guilty, don’t forget about it.”
His attorney, Iamele, told reporters the matter should have been handled in civil not criminal court.
Guthrie was scheduled to meet with council leadership late Thursday afternoon to discuss his future, according to council sources, but that meeting was canceled. Alegi’s statement was released shortly before 5 p.m.
Lippe said he consulted with the Office of the Attorney General about the plea and was told Guthrie’s plea creates a vacancy in the office.
“They confirmed it, that’s their reading,” said Lippe, adding that Guthrie’s ability to remain on the council is outside the scope of his prosecution.
“The state constitution is pretty clear on when you’re a public official and you do bad things, bad things happen to your position,” Lippe told reporters after the hearing.
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