he special legislative committee investigating alleged political firings during Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s administration issued its final report 20 months ago and the legislature enacted recommendations from it last year ? but one small piece of business remains.
A lawyer for two men accused of helping carry out the firings ? Craig Chesek and Gregory Maddalone ? and the counsel for the General Assembly will argue Monday before Maryland?s highest court whether the two men could be compelled to respond to questions they refused to answer when they appeared before the committee two years ago.
The two sides share very different views of the significance of the issues, as was the case during the partisan and contentious meetings of the Special Committee on State Employee Rights and Protections.
Donald Braden, who represents Chesek and Maddalone, sees the case as a continuation of the waste of time and effort that the specialcommittee itself represented.
“Are they going to give up this nonsense?” Braden asked. “The attorney general saw a major issue in this case. I don?t see it as a monumental issue.”
For Dan Friedman, the assistant attorney general who represents the legislature, the main point of pursuing the two men is to show “you can?t stall out the clock on a committee investigation.”
Baltimore County Circuit Judge Thomas Bollinger last October ruled that Chesek and Maddalone did have to answer the questions about employee firings they declined, but Maddalone didn?t have to say who was paying his attorney?s fees.
Braden said Bollinger didn?t have the jurisdiction to enforce subpoenas that weren?t valid because the special committee had no authority to issue them. Friedman argues that the committee had the power to issue the subpoena and the judge had the authority to enforce it.
A further wrinkle is that the legislature last year enacted a law spelling out that the Legislative Policy Committee could delegate the subpoena it possessed to another committee. Braden said that just goes to show that the special committee had no such power at the time, but Friedman said the law “was to clarify the existing power, not to create a new one.”
