Harford County Councilman Dion Guthrie on Thursday pleaded “no contest” to stealing funds from the union local he led for more than 50 years.

Guthrie, an 86-year-old Democrat who represented District A, accepted responsibility for a single felony theft charge by entering a “nolo contendere” plea in Baltimore County Circuit Court, acknowledging prosecutors had sufficient evidence to convict him without admitting guilt.

The plea meant the loss of his council seat.

Citing the state constitution, which requires the removal of elected officials who are convicted of felonies or who plead nolo contendere, the Harford County Council said in a statement Thursday afternoon that Guthrie was removed from office. His seat is now considered vacant, the statement said.

Under the county charter, a majority of remaining council members must appoint someone to fill the vacancy from a list of at least three names from the Democratic Central Committee, the council’s statement said. They has 60 days, beginning Friday, to make an appointment.

The former president and business manager of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1501 denied the state’s allegations and said he would not resign from the county council. Guthrie’s attorney, Domenic Iamele, said after the hearing Thursday morning that his client planned to serve the two remaining years of his term.

“Talk about a high and a low all in the same day,” Guthrie said in a phone call Thursday evening. He blamed “politics” and in particular Harford County Council President Patrick Vincenti, a Republican.

Vincenti declined to say whether Guthrie would be removed from office early Thursday afternoon, saying he still needed to speak to the councilman.

Baltimore County Judge Dennis M. Robinson Jr. accepted Guthrie’s plea. Then Robinson struck the guilty finding and granted him probation before judgment, citing Guthrie’s age and lack of a criminal record. He will serve one year of unsupervised probation.

Prosecutors in Baltimore County charged Guthrie with stealing between $5,000 and $25,000 from the IBEW Local 1501 between Oct. 1, 2017, and Sept. 30, 2021.

Guthrie has already paid more than $23,000 in restitution to the Cockeysville-based local union after a U.S. Department of Labor investigation found that he had taken about $15,112 from the union by using its American Express card for personal use, according to the department’s report. Some purchases included payments to an Ocean City beach rental in 2018 and to his Florida timeshare homeowner’s association.

According to the labor department’s report, he also misappropriated $45,457 from the local’s health and welfare fund to pay benefits to people who didn’t qualify for them, along with other expenses like personal credit cards and bibles.

“I’m taking responsibility. I’m the president of the union,” Guthrie said in court, although he denied that he had improperly spent any of the union’s money. “That’s why I agreed to pay this money, even though a lot of it is union money.”

Guthrie also said that the union owes him close to $39,000, which he said he would “donate” to the local.

Guthrie’s attorney said after the hearing that the probation before judgment means there is “no finding of guilt,” allowing him to continue to hold his county position.

Spiro T. Agnew, President Nixon’s first vice president, also entered a no-contest plea to a tax evasion charge, Iamele said. He resigned his position the same day.

Thursday afternoon, saying he needed to speak to Guthrie first. The council’s attorney Meaghan Alegi did not return a phone call Thursday.”

After Guthrie’s remarks, Baltimore County Assistant State’s Attorney Adam Lippe said the state “accepts the defendant’s apology.”

“If he was a younger man, the state wouldn’t have offered him this type of plea,” Lippe said.

Before Robinson approved the state’s recommendation of probation before judgment, Iamele listed Guthrie’s medical conditions, including heart conditions and colon cancer, along with recent losses in his family.

Iamele also argued that Guthrie had enriched the union by arranging for its purchase of a Cockeysville office and ensuring another IBEW local received a contract for work in Harford County, boosting jobs.

“He not only denies taking any funds, he’s happy about enriching IBEW Local 1501 and the IBEW more generally,” he said.

Robinson interjected to say, “It’s getting to the point where it might be one day in jail for each additional word.”

Terence Hanley, who according to his LinkedIn is Harford County’s Deputy Director of Parks & Recreation, also spoke in Guthrie’s favor during the sentencing portion of the hearing, noting that Guthrie showed up at a council meeting two days after having part of his intestine removed.

After the court hearing ended, Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey Gahler called on Guthrie to resign from the county council.

“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. Both claims are complete nonsense,” Gahler said in a statement. He added that the county manages a budget of more than $1 billion.

IBEW Local 1501 represents Peraton contractors that work at NASA, including workers on the James Hubble telescope in Virginia and the Goddard Space and Flight Center in Greenbelt, as well as AmTote employees who work on tote machines at horse racetracks. The Cockeysville-based local has about 260 active members, according to the U.S. Department of Labor report.

IBEW Local 1501’s income came from membership dues, which declined due to changes in the industry and the COVID-19 pandemic, Iamele said in court. According to the Labor Department’s report, the local’s “expenses were voluminous in comparison to the union’s income,” as the local spent as if still had 1,000 members.

The report said that Guthrie was “forced to retire” on Jan. 1, 2022, and the local was placed under trusteeship with the national IBEW in 2021 “as a result of the mismanagement of union funds.”

Contact Cassidy Jensen at cjensen@baltsun.com, 443-515-2165 and x.com/@cassidymjensen.