The Maryland Board of Public Works today is being asked to approve the payment of $107,000 in back salary to a former public information officer at the Public Service Commission illegally fired by Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s appointed chairman in 2004.
The firings of five PSC employees by then-Chairman Kenneth Schisler were among the spate of allegedly political dismissals in the Ehrlich years that led to an 18-month investigation by a special joint committee of the Maryland House and Senate.
Republicans called it a “witch hunt” that found no wrongdoing by Ehrlich, but a trail of politically tinged e-mails and actions by lower-level aides.
“I want to emphasize it is not a settlement,” said Douglas Nazarian, the PSC?s general counsel.
“It is only partial relief for some of the damage” Higginbotham endured, said his attorney Howard Schulman. “He?s determined” to fight on. “He feels he was fired for political reasons.”
The payout to Robert Higginbotham II is the result of a prolonged court battle between
Higginbotham and the PSC that has resulted in several appeals.
Higginbotham?s suit was initially dismissed by a Baltimore City judge but then upheld by the Court of Special Appeals.
The courts found that Schisler on his own authority was not permitted to fire special appointees, but needed the consent of a majority of the five-member commission.
After that decision by the Court of Appeals, the full PSC in September 2005 fired Higginbotham again. The $107,000 is the amount he would have made in the 16 months from when he was illegally terminated by Schisler until the full commission gave him the boot.
Higginbotham has appealed a part of the lawsuit that claims his constitutional rights were violated for political reasons.
A second suit claiming the PSC defamed the fired workers by posting their photos in the lobby of a state office building was dismissed
and may also be appealed, Schulman said.
The Board of Public Works, made up of the governor, comptroller and treasurer, is being chaired today by Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown while Gov. Martin O?Malley attends a speech to
Congress by the Irish prime minister.
