Celeste Nader had been in her job 38 years when her boss told her, just before Thanksgiving, that she would be fired. She could take retirement, but she had to rush to complete piles of paperwork before the close of business that day.
Nader had worked her way up from a social worker to a payroll manager with Maryland's Department of Human Resources. She was given no reason for her 2003 ouster, but a former agency official said he was told that her position should be cleared to make room for a governor's appointee.
"I wanted to work at the state and retire with dignity," she said. "You don't do this to human beings."
Nader is not in the official tally of those fired since Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R) took office Jan. 15, 2003. But she was one of dozens of mid-level bureaucrats forced out of their jobs. In many cases, the workers resigned, retired or were demoted after they were told that they would be fired.
As Ehrlich remakes state government, he has reached far into the ranks of public workers whose jobs have historically been safe from political turnover, according to state records and interviews. They include workers who analyzed budgets, investigated employee discrimination and managed benefits.
Ehrlich, the first Republican governor in a generation, has also expanded the reach of his patronage by bringing people in; he has made appointments to relatively low-level jobs, such as motor vehicle workers, computer specialists, a highway traffic monitor and other positions that until now were filled through civil-service hires, records and interviews show.
His personnel moves have gone further and deeper than those of his predecessors, when Democrats succeeded fellow Democrats, according to former state personnel officials.
The governor's hirings and firings have become one of the most caustic issues dividing political leaders in Annapolis. Democratic lawmakers agreed last week to investigate Ehrlich's dismissals, starting the first legislative probe in three decades.
Ehrlich has rejected Democrats' accusations that he fired workers for partisan reasons and has said most of those dismissed were in high-level or policy positions.
Lawrence J. Hogan Jr., Ehrlich's appointments secretary, said the governor wanted "to bring in the best and the brightest people. . . . It's very difficult to bring about the change that voters demanded if you don't change any of the political appointees. . . . We don't care about party affiliation."
In past successions in Maryland, turnover was largely limited to top executives and key policymakers, according to Michael Glass, former acting state personnel director. Glass, who worked in personnel from 1971 to 1996, said that when previous administrations changed, only the "assistant secretaries and above were the level that were at risk," he said.
Ehrlich's top advisers have said they fired 284 workers. That number, they say, is modest compared with what occurred when his predecessor, Parris N. Glendening (D), took office in 1995, replacing fellow Democrat William Donald Schaefer.
