A key human resources director fired last year by Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration is urging a legislative committee to review pay raises, promotions and firings that he alleges reflect a "shadow government" operating outside of the state personnel system.
George W. Casey, a registered Republican who was dismissed in September from the Maryland Department of Transportation, acknowledges that it is common for new governors to appoint allies to top state jobs. But, he says, the Ehrlich administration has targeted some lower-level career employees, according to a letter and statement released yesterday by state Democratic lawmakers.
"What I observed in the state workplace under the current administration has been the most harmful and corrosive personnel practices I have observed in 20 years in the field," Casey wrote in the letter released by Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert).
Casey, a veteran personnel director mostly in private industry, was appointed in September 2001 by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D). Ehrlich, the state's first Republican governor in a generation, took office in January 2003 and since then has fired 284 of the approximately 7,000 state workers who serve at his pleasure.
Casey declined to comment, other than to confirm that he wrote the letter and statement. He is expected to offer similar testimony Thursday during a review of the Transportation Department budget by the House Appropriations subcommittee on transportation, according to the panel's chairman, Del. Peter Franchot (D-Montgomery), who released Casey's statement.
A spokeswoman for Ehrlich, Shareese DeLeaver, said Democratic leaders are simply angry that they no longer have the opportunity to control appointments. "The notion that a kind of shadow government exists in dark corners is both ridiculous and unfounded," DeLeaver said.
Ehrlich's hiring and firing practices came under scrutiny last week after the governor asked for and received the resignation of longtime aide Joseph Steffen, who admitted that he spread salacious rumors about the personal life of Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley. O'Malley is expected to seek the Democratic nomination for governor next year.
Leading Democratic lawmakers allege that Steffen was one of several Ehrlich operatives at the center of an orchestrated attempt to purge Democrats from state government.
