Senate Passes Bill Targeting Potential Political Influence in State Hiring

After a lengthy debate Friday afternoon, the Maryland Senate passed a bill that would require reporting about the involvement in the governor’s appointments office in state hiring decisions.

Senate Bill 751 was introduced by Sen. Clarence Lam (D-Baltimore, Howard), who is co-chair of the Joint Committee on Fair Practices and State Personnel Oversight. For two sessions, he has been raising questions about state employees at Grade 19 or higher who were vetted by the governor’s appointments office before being hired.

He introduced a similar bill last legislative session in the House of Delegates that passed that chamber, but died in the Senate for lack of time. This year, the measure passed the Senate 26-17 on Friday and heads over to the House late in the session.

Lam and supporters of the bill say they are concerned that the appointments office is considering the political leanings of state applicants or other information that should not be relevant to their qualifications for employment. The lawmakers have received limited information about the role of the appointments office, including a statistic provided at a briefing on the topic last fall: between July 1, 2017, and Sept. 27, 2018, 346 of the 771 people hired by state agencies at Grade 19 or higher had been vetted first by the governor’s appointments office.

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