Some Senate Republicans said a bill designed to give state employees more protections from sudden and unexplained dismissal had been watered down by the Gov. Martin O?Malley administration.
“All it does is say Eloise [Foster, the secretary of budget and management] has to determine which employees are at will and which are not,” said Sen. Lowell Stoltzfus, an Eastern Shore Republican, on Thursday.
Stoltzfus was a member of a bipartisan legislative commission that held extensive hearings last summer and fall on alleged illegal hirings and firings by Gov. Robert Ehrlich?s administration.
Democrats accused Ehrlich of endorsing the firing of some state employees based on their political affiliation.
Democrats introduced a bill requiring a written reason for firing a management service or special appointment employee.
The bill also would have given employees the right to seek legal action in court without having exhausted the internal chain of command.
But during the Senate?s final vote on the bill Thursday, Stoltzfus said he was disappointed by the bill?s final form.
Five other senators joined him in votingagainst the bill.
“Every provision proposed by the commission has been stripped by the request of the O?Malley administration,” Stoltzfus said.
Amendments offered by the Senate Finance Committee and adopted on the Senate floor deleted the written notice requirement and the right of employees to seek court action.
“[Senate President Thomas Mike] Miller said this was a beneficial process,” Stoltzfus said later. “I find that to be less than the truth.”
