At the first meeting of Gov.-elect Martin O?Malley?s transition team Tuesday, members were told its top priorities are filling the top 40 positions in state government and making crucial decisions on the state budget, including filling a $440-million budget shortfall.
“We?re fully aware of the challenges we face” between now and Jan. 17, inauguration day, transition director Ralph Tyler, currently the Baltimore City solicitor, told more than 30 members of the 41-person transition team crowded into a conference room at temporary offices in the William Donald Schaefer Tower in downtown Baltimore.
Del. Anthony Brown, the lieutenant governor-elect and chair of the transition effort, said the focus is on getting Cabinet secretaries for key department and chairs of some boards and commissions.
Tyler said those departments include Budget and Management, Health and Mental Hygiene, Transportation, Environment, Business and Economic Development, Natural Resources, Public Safety and Correctional Services, Human Resources and Juvenile Services.
Those departments represent areas where O’Malley had either made significant promises during thecampaign or had criticized the Ehrlich administration’s management.
Tyler said the transition effort already has received more than 1,000 “expressions of interest” in jobs on its Web site, marylandtransition.com. “Soon we?ll have computers” in the bare offices, Tyler said, and they will be categorize and organize the job applications.
The transition members were asked to submit names of their own suggestions for key positions by next Tuesday.
Tyler said the governor-elect wants to start naming Cabinet secretaries by the middle of December.
Brown said finding the second, third and fourth tier of appointments ? assistant secretaries and below ? would take well beyond January.
He also said members of the Ehrlich administration have “demonstrated their cooperation” in providing space and support, and agencies are drafting documents to aid in the transition process.
The transition team will be breaking up into 20 or 30 work groups, said O?Malley spokesman Rick Abbruzzese.
Former state Budget Secretary Eloise Foster is heading a small budget work group that includes other former state fiscal officials, and Matt Gallagher, a transition staff member, said it will be “gauging the severity” of the shortfall for the budget that must be submitted in January.
Brown said the third priority for the transition effort is to come up with a legislative package that will implement some of the campaign promises.
