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Former Montgomery County Inspector General Tom Dagley abused his post while trying to secure an employee a 22-percent pay raise, asserted county officials, though Dagley said his efforts were justified and the charges were being made in retaliation for prior investigations.
At a heated county Ethics Commission hearing Monday, Associate County Attorney Christine Collins said Dagley threatened to investigate salary practices in the county’s Office of Human Resources if Director Joseph Adler did not grant then-Deputy Inspector General Christopher Giusti a 22-percent pay raise.
Brought to the Ethics Commission by former County Councilwoman Duchy Trachtenberg in November 2009, the accusation centers around an email conversation between Dagley and Adler in which Dagley issued a “veiled threat” aimed at coercing Adler to raise Giusti’s pay, said Collins.
Ethics Commission Chief Counsel Robert Cobb would not release to The Washington Examiner the email or any of the other documents presented in the hearing.
Dagley — the county’s top watchdog from 2005 until the beginning of 2011 — and his Baltimore-based attorney Mark Mixter refuted the claims, arguing that Dagley was concerned about pay inequality across mid-level management.
Mixter also pointed to three investigations Dagley performed related to Adler’s office as Adler’s motivation for accusing Dagley. At the time that Dagley requested the pay raise, Giusti had been with the county for four years and was paid $105,000 annually, which put his salary below the majority of county employees at his management level. He ranked 102 out of 106 employees in terms of salary, Mixter said.
When Dagley hired a new assistant inspector general — a lower position than Giusti’s — he received $108,000 annually. Adler increased Giusti’s salary 2.5 percent in July 2009 after prompting by Dagley, said Adler and Council Staff Director Steve Farber.
Even with the pay raise, Giusti was still at the bottom of his pay grade, said Mixter. But Human Resources looks to other employees at the same management level in the same department to determine salaries, so Giusti — the only employee at his management level in a three-person department — didn’t automatically qualify for a larger pay increase.
Farber called this practice “inherently unfair.”
But Dagley didn’t follow through with his promises to investigate the matter once Adler raised Giusti’s pay again, proving that his promises were nothing more than a threat, said Collins. Dagley blamed Tractenberg’s accusations for his inaction.
The Ethics Commission will meet again Dec. 20.
