Was Mosby ethical or is the bar set low?

I suppose there is some comfort to be had knowing that Baltimore Inspector General Isabel Mercedes Cumming found “no misspent tax dollars” during the investigation of the Baltimore state’s attorney’s travel and personal business. But, really, is it too much to expect that our elected officials should actually come to work (“Baltimore’s Marilyn Mosby may not have done anything illegal, but the top prosecutor’s travel still raises concerns,” Feb. 11)?

According to the report, Marilyn Mosby spent close to 30% of 2018 and 2019 somewhere other than at her office.

While I fully understand and appreciate the value of participation in professional conferences, at some point that professional learning should be applied to the tasks at hand — and at home. When 30% of your time is spent away from your job, how much added value are the taxpayers reaping from those travels?

And since I am already annoyed, shall I also mention that, while it may be entirely above board and within established protocols, is it really necessary to use police resources as a limousine service back and forth from an out-of-state luxury spa?

After witnessing the long line of unethical and criminal conduct displayed in recent years by elected officials in Maryland, perhaps I should just be relieved that State’s Attorney Mosby committed “no financial improprieties whatsoever.” But when it comes to impropriety in general, our bar just seems to be getting awfully low.

Rita Fromm, Timonium

Mayor Scott’s vaccine outreach is justified

I appreciate the insight of Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott in asking Johnson & Johnson to sell COVID-19 vaccines directly to the city (“Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott asks Johnson & Johnson to sell COVID vaccines directly to city,” Feb. 8).

Reading between the lines it is clear that Mayor Scott has a stunning lack of confidence in the Hogan administration to distribute the vaccination in an equitable fashion.

Gov. Larry Hogan is already on record in the Washington Post as disparaging Baltimore residents as unwilling to get vaccinated.

This is one 67-year-old city resident who has been trying to get a vaccination appointment since I became eligible on Jan. 26. I, too, share Mayor Scott’s wholesale lack of confidence in the Hogan administration.

Case in point was the Friday before last, where at 8 a.m., I received a text that appointments could be made at the Six Flags facility in Prince George’s County. I rushed to my computer, which flourished appointments every couple of seconds.

But whenever I attempted to make an appointment, the website replied, “Something has gone wrong.” After about an hour of this, I attempted to call the one phone number offered in the state which was always busy.

Contacts with both the Prince George’s County and Baltimore City health departments and all of my delegates from the 41st legislative district were in vain. Nobody had any idea what was going on.

By around 3:30 in the afternoon, I found out what had happened when I got through to the phone number. Apparently, 10,000 people contacted the website in the first seven minutes and then the website crashed.

Of course, the hundreds and thousands of folks trying to make appointments were not informed that the website had crashed.

The next day, Governor Hogan ended up in the papers taking credit for this as a civic success. To the people who spent most of a morning attempting to make appointments on a crashed website, it was anything but a success.

Mr. Hogan was quoted in your article about Mayor Scott’s idea as saying “nice try but it won’t happen.”

Well, Larry, Feb. 5th’s appointments didn’t happen either, but at least if Mayor Scott cannot secure the coveted Johnson & Johnson vaccines, I doubt he will style this as a success.

At a time where one’s mortality has never been more at stake, we have websites that don’t work, mail that isn’t being delivered and a governor who doesn’t care about Baltimore.

Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore