Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren has resigned, pleading guilty as part of a plea deal to a pair of campaign finance charges. She was sentenced to a 12-month conditional discharge that requires her to resign from office by December 1st.
Warren faced two felony counts of violating election laws, along with her former campaign chair and treasurer Albert Jones Jr. and Rosalind Brooks Harris. They were accused of illegally transferring money between the mayor’s campaign account and her political action committee account. Each could have faced up to four years in prison.
Jury selection was to have begun Monday morning in the Mayor’s trial. Instead, attorneys met in the judge’s chambers and spent most of the day working out plea deals for all three defendants.
The mayor did not make any statement on leaving court, but her attorney, Joe Damelio, said the mayor was not involved in any “pay to play” scheme and did not defraud anyone.