Businesses hesitant on vaccine rules
State’s retailers say they won’t make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for workers — for now
A day after Maryland hospitals said they would start requiring COVID-19 vaccinations as a condition of employment, businesses, retail associations and consumer groups in the state said they would not rush to make the same decision.
The exception might be in nursing homes, where the coronavirus ravaged staff and residents in the early weeks and months of the pandemic, accounting for much of the state’s early death toll. At least one in Maryland already has imposed immunization requirements on workers.
Elsewhere, companies said they will encourage staffers to get vaccinated, rather than demand they do, though it’s not clear whether that will hold true if the COVID-19 vaccines win full federal approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“A lot of employers are treading carefully on this one,” said Charles Bacharach, an employment lawyer at Gordon Feinblatt in Baltimore. “There is just so much misinformation that a lot of employees are just saying I’m not going to get it. The incentives may be a whole lot more effective.”
The debate about inoculation mandates comes as COVID-19 infections, deaths and testing positivity rates fall to new lows, and employers in Maryland and elsewhere wrestle with safely reintroducing workers and consumers back to offices and other public spaces.
It also follows months of speculation about the nation’s ability to reach herd immunity, or the threshold that impedes the virus’ ability to infect more people. Data shows vaccinations significantly slowing the spread of the coronavirus and lessening the death toll as uptake increases. And public health experts say it is the single best pathway out of the pandemic.
Ward B. Coe, an attorney leading the General Assembly’s investigation into McGrath’s salary and benefits, told the committee members Thursday that email exchanges showed Matthew Sherring, a top deputy for McGrath, pushed for extensive changes to the minutes of the agency’s board meetings that would have scrubbed references to McGrath’s payout.
The email and proposed edits, which Coe displayed during the hearing, showed Sherring lobbying a paralegal at the agency to delete details of the severance deal from the record and to cut McGrath’s claim that Hogan knew of the payout and didn’t object to it from the minutes of a closed-door session.
State Sen. Clarence Lam, a Democrat representing Baltimore and Howard counties, called that “deeply disturbing” and said the exchange of emails “appear to point to an effort to subvert the truth and an intent to deceive.” Lam is co-chair of the committee.
An assistant attorney general advising the environmental service rejected Sherring’s proposed revisions to the minutes.
Hogan has repeatedly denied any knowledge of McGrath’s hefty expenses or his efforts to secure a lucrative payout. The Republican governor ordered an audit of the agency after the six-figure deal came to light.
Sherring’s emails don’t explicitly state whether McGrath asked for the changes, but Coe said the phrasing — and a text exchange in which McGrath, who’d already left MES, told Sherring that he wanted to review the
draft minutes “offline” — suggest that possibility.
An attorney for Sherring declined to comment Thursday on those allegations.
McGrath’s attorney, Bruce L. Marcus, said in a statement to The Sun that the hearing “devolved into a series of unsubstantiated and baseless personal attacks on the former executive director.” He blasted the proceedings as a “dangerous use of investigatory power disguised as a search for facts.”
“Use of public hearings to malign and disparage former officials, in this case Mr. McGrath, in an effort to engage in self-promotion is inconsistent with the statutory purposes for which the committee was authorized,” Marcus wrote. “Mischaracterizations of testimony and events does not advance any legitimate purpose for this
committee or any other public body.”
Sherring and McGrath testified last year before the committee. But they largely remained tight-lipped, each invoking their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination more than 150 times.
McGrath created a position for Harris at MES with an annual salary of more than $155,000 and he was hired without a formal interview.
Not long after he started, Harris told lawmakers Thursday, McGrath told him to attend a fundraiser for Hogan’s reelection campaign in December 2017. Harris said he felt he had little choice but to go — fearing it would “put me in an awkward position if I said no.” He bought a ticket in exchange for a $1,000 donation to Hogan’s campaign. Harris said McGrath later solicited $250 for another Hogan fundraiser, and campaign finance records show Harris chipped in $2,000 toward Hogan’s inaugural committee.
After McGrath left to head Hogan’s staff, he filed a flurry of nearly $56,000 in expense claims with the environmental service, and Harris recalled working late into the evening to approve them. Some were months or years old. Coe flagged several, including meals bought inside the Walt Disney World Resort’s Magic Kingdom theme park during a day in which McGrath was supposed to be attending a nearby conference and put in for 12 hours of work on his timecard.
In further transactions with MES after McGrath joined the governor’s staff, Harris said, McGrath asked for an environmental service employee to fetch his vehicle from Government House in Annapolis, take it for cleaning and leave an MES vehicle as a loaner. A text exchange between Harris and the other agency staffer, shown Thursday to the committee, described the request.
A spokesman for Hogan said neither Hogan nor other staffers in the governor’s office were aware of such alleged requests.
Coe also told lawmakers that another former top environmental service official, Beth Wotjen, said that while pressing for his severance package, McGrath claimed he was taking a pay cut to serve as Hogan’s chief of staff. In fact, Coe said documents provided by Hogan’s office showed McGrath negotiated for the same salary at his new job a week before he talked with Wotjen and other MES board members.