Senate Republican leader David Brinkley said he is going to ask the Legislature?s nonpartisan staff to assemble a list of state employees fired by the O?Malley administration because he?s dissatisfied with the information he was sent Friday by Budget Secretary Eloise Foster.
Brinkley was unhappy that Foster would not say how many of 224 resignations and 73 retirements were in lieu of termination. Foster argued that releasing that information by department could violate employee confidentiality.
Foster told Brinkley that 78 at-will employees had been terminated from Jan. 17 to June 1.
But the terminations have continued since June 1, and some of those about to be fired chose to resign.
For instance, on June 9, Deidre McCabe, the public information officer in the Department of Disabilities, received a certified letter at home from Transportation Secretary John Porcari saying that her “executive position had been terminated.”
McCabe was technically an employee of the Maryland Port Administration detailed to the new Disabilities Department. McCabe, a former Baltimore Sun reporter, is married to Chris McCabe, a former Republican senator and Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s Human Resources secretary. The McCabes have four school-age children. She?s been unemployed for five months.
But others, like Jerry Henderson, the marketing director at the Maryland Transportation Authority, the bridge and tunnels agency, was given the option April 10 of resigning or being fired. Henderson, a former bank vice president, said he resigned, got a good reference and is now back at work in the private industry.
Aside from the governor?s office, where 42 employees were terminated, the largest number of departures came from the Department of Transportation, where 32 left, and that doesn?t include the Port Administration and Mass Transit Administration, which have a separate personnel system.
A call to Foster?s office about the letter produced a return call from O?Malley spokesman Steve Kearney.
“The same hypocrites who are whining this year defended a governor from their party when he fired a lot more people last year,” Kearney told The Examiner. “A small number of people want to go back to bickering and getting nothing done and keeping ice dancers in charge of port security. But the campaign is over; it?s time to govern. We promised the people of Maryland a competent and professional government, and it?s time to deliver.”
