Gordon Harden, a candidate for Baltimore County Council, failed to pay state and federal income taxes for years and didn’t pay up on the $144,000 he owed until the government placed liens against his properties, according to Lutherville/Timonium Patch.

Ironically, fiscal responsibility has been a big part of  Harden’s platform — the Democratic fifth district candidate earlier told Patch: “I don’t want citizens paying more taxes. I want more citizens paying taxes.”

Harden told Patch that he “made a deliberate decision in late 1997, when his daughter was entering college, to pay her tuition instead of his taxes:  “I paid tuition instead of taxes from 1998 until 2000. It took me eight years to catch up. But I paid every dime of it with interest.”