Gov.-elect Martin O?Malley?s 41-member transition team was supposed to hand in its suggestions for filling top jobs in the new administration this week, but a key State House player not on the team, Senate President Thomas Mike Miller, has decided to send O?Malley his own list of recommendations.
Miller, an often highly partisan Democrat, suggests the new governor retain members of the Ehrlich administration, including several Republicans, among them State Police Superintendent Thomas Hutchins and Marty Madden, head of the Bay Critical Areas Commission. He?d also like O?Malley to find a job for Sen. Sandy Schrader, a Howard County Republican he helped defeat through funding Democratic Party committees.
Miller also likes the job being done by Aris Melissaratos, secretary of Business and Economic Development, and George Owings, the secretary of Veterans Affairs who was Democratic whip in the House of Delegates when Gov. Robert Ehrlich appointed him to succeed Hutchins in the job.
“You couldn?t find a better guardian of the Chesapeake Bay” than Madden, Miller told The Examiner. “He?s a very decent man” and achieved a 100 percent rating from environmentalists as a Howard County senator.
Schrader, who was Madden?s aide and succeeded him, is “of the same mold ? a consensus-builder, a wonderful personality, a hard worker.”
“Those two are where the people are,” in the middle, Miller said, not like some of the right-wing Republicans who give him fits in the Senate.
Hutchins, a former Republican delegate from Charles County, was a retired state trooper, and “I find the working men of the state police know him and support him,” Miller said. Melissaratos, a Democrat but a strong Ehrlich supporter, “did his job with enthusiasm.”
“I hope at least he gives them all a good look,” Miller said.
Owings and Hutchins are both from southern Maryland, and Miller says he feels that area of the state is not represented well on O?Malley?s transition team. The governor-elect needs to look beyond Baltimore to fill his administration, he said.
