Alone, this time, and crying, this time, Councillor Ana Bailao held another City Hall news conference on Monday — this time to announce she had pleaded guilty to the drunk driving charge she had said she would fight.

“I made a bad decision,” Bailao said. “I take responsibility for it.”

Bailao acknowledged that her blood-alcohol level was 0.13 grams of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood, more than 60 per cent above the legal limit of 0.08. She also acknowledged that, as the Star reported, she had been drinking at the Thompson Hotel before her arrest with a lobbyist representing a casino company, among other corporate interests.

“I can guarantee you that no discussions about any of those files happened at that location,” Bailao said.

Bailao said she pleaded guilty on Monday to the charge of exceeding the legal limit. A second charge, of impaired driving, was dropped. She said she has been prohibited from driving for one year and that she will pay a $1,000 fine.

Bailao, a first-term councillor who represents Ward 18 in Davenport, is a Liberal swing voter whose support is courted assiduously by both Mayor Rob Ford and the left-leaning opposition. To the dismay of the advocacy group MADD Canada, supportive councillors of all stripes attended her post-arrest news conference in October, which was coordinated by Ford’s communications staff.

None of her colleagues joined her Monday as she stood at a lectern in a second-floor hallway. Wiping away tears and choking back sobs, she said that she had been listening to poor advice, under “unrelenting” media pressure, when she announced in October that she would plead not guilty.

“Try to be on this side,” she said, referring to the cameras pointed at her. “It’s not easy. You’re a new politician. You’re just getting used to having all of you [reporters] on this side, and you just have a thousand things coming at you, and I didn’t listen to my heart, and I should’ve.”

Her lawyer, she said, continues to think she could have pleaded not guilty. (The lawyer, Peter Thorning, declined to comment.) Asked why she would not listen to her lawyer, she said, “This is about my conscience.”

“You need to be good with yourself,” she said. “You’re a better person, you’re a better politician, you’re a better friend, you’re a better family member. And I needed to do this to be okay with myself and my conscience and my heart.”

Bailao said she had felt “in control” while driving. While she said that “one drink is too many,” she refused to say how many she consumed.

“It doesn’t really matter. It was one too many. And at the point — I don’t want to say, here, as well, it was, or three or four or five, and everybody thinks that three or four — it was one too many,” she said.

MADD chief executive Andrew Murie said a woman of Bailao’s size would have to drink “a lot of alcohol” to register 0.13. “It’s not one or two drinks,” Murie said. Bailao, he said, could have avoided the flip-flop.

“‘I’m innocent; I’m going to plead not guilty,’ blah blah blah — I was really clear at the time: if the police didn’t make a mistake, and she was over that legal limit, she was going to find out that not a lot of these people get off,” Murie said. “Bad advice, bad advice. Whoever was giving her direction on PR that day really didn’t know what they were talking about, because the police are really good at impaired driving investigations.”

Of seven councillors who attended the October news conference, only one, fellow centrist Josh Colle, responded to a request for comment late Monday afternoon. Colle said he didn’t regret standing by Bailao.

“I know I and some others took some flak for it, but it was more about supporting a friend in a tough time, whether they did something wrong or not. And obviously at that time it was still to be determined,” Colle said.

Ford, who himself pleaded no-contest to a Florida drunk driving charge in 1999, released a Monday statement praising Bailao, saying she had “taken full responsibility for her actions.”

“Ana is a good local councillor, she works hard and represents her residents well at City Hall,” Ford said. “I look forward to continuing to work with her on council.”

Bailao, who said she will not resign, was arrested at around 1:45 a.m. Oct. 16. She attended the Mayor’s Ball for the Arts earlier that night, then went to the Thompson Hotel, where she socialized with a group that included prominent lobbyist JamieBesner and former Ford chief of staff Nick Kouvalis.

Besner, of Sussex Strategy Group, lobbies on behalf of MGM Resorts; Kouvalis was contracted by Sussex to conduct polling and research for MGM’s efforts to bring a resort casino to Toronto. The group also included Councillor Mark Grimes, chair of the board of Exhibition Place, MGM’s preferred casino location.

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Bailao said she got into a taxi after leaving the hotel, but asked to be taken to her car, which she then drove without turning her headlights on. She was stopped by police near Bathurst and Harbord Sts.

The case was scheduled to return to court on Tuesday for a hearing that reporters would have attended. Thorning said he asked the hearing to be moved up to Monday because he is out of town on Tuesday.