Maryland lawmakers may force ex-Hogan chief of staff to answer questions on payout
Legislative Policy panel can issue subpoenas or delegate its subpoena authority
A General Assembly committee with the power to subpoena witnesses has scheduled a special meeting next week, as lawmakers say they still have questions about a six-figure payout made to the governor’s former chief of staff.
The Legislative Policy Committee, a bipartisan panel co-chaired by the Senate president and the speaker of the House of Delegates, can issue subpoenas or delegate subpoena authority to others. The committee, which typically only meets once a year to approve the General Assembly’s budget, will meetWednesday afternoon.
Senate President Bill Ferguson said in a statement that “strong questions persist”
about Gov. Larry Hogan’s former chief of staff, RoyMcGrath, who resigned in August after The Baltimore Sun reported that he received a payout worth more than $238,000 from his prior job leading the Maryland Environmental Service, an independent
state agency.
Lawmakers are concerned about the propriety of such a generous payout — which was described by McGrath and others as “severance”— being given out for a voluntary departure froman agency that gets 95% of its funding from local governments and state agencies. Government agencies hire the environmental service and its 800-plus employees for work such as operating landfills and sewage plants.
Lawmakers also are probingMcGrath’s travel and business expenses. The Sun reported that just after he left the environmental service, McGrath was reimbursed more than $55,000for his expenses, which included dozens of trips to meetings and conferences, as well as numerous meals, including with other MES and state employees.
The agency paid for his graduate school tuition and for an online training course from Harvard University that cost more than $14,000.
“As long as there are unanswered questions about taxpayer-funded reimbursements, we must continue to ask the hard questions,” saidHouse Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, a Baltimore County Democrat.
“The legislature has a duty to all Marylanders to investigate this issue and produce answers,” said Ferguson, a Baltimore Democrat.
A General Assembly joint committee that conducts oversight of state employees
has held multiple hearings, grilling MES board members, the current director and the former deputy director. That committee does not have the authority to issue subpoenas unless authorizedby the Legislative Policy Committee.
Those hearings have led lawmakers to question how much the Republican governor knew about McGrath’ s quest for the severance payment. Hogan has said he was not involved, but acknowledged that when he asked McGrath to become his chief of staff, McGrath said he had towork out financial issues withMES.
MES board members who approved the payment to McGrath testified that they were led to believe Hogan had endorsed the payout.
McGrath has not agreed to testify before the Joint Committee on Fair Practices and State Personnel Oversight. He’s nowrepresented by Greenbelt-based attorney Bruce Marcus, who has represented politicians and government officials on both sides of the aisle — most notably, former Republican Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold, who was sent to jail on a conviction of misconduct in office.
Marcus wrote in a letter to lawmakers on Aug. 31: There are a number of issues that will require resolution before we are able to counsel and advise Mr. McGrath regarding the Joint Committee’s overture.”
Marcus did not explain in the letter what those issues are.
He declined to comment on Wednesday and McGrath did not respond to a request for comment.
The General Assembly’s Legislative Policy Committee is comprised of top leaders from both parties in the legislature. It oversees the work of the assembly’s standing committees and has the authority to hold hearings, issue subpoenas and propose legislationonany subject.
Jones and Ferguson have assigned Sen. CoryMcCray of Baltimore and Del. Marc Korman of Montgomery County, both Democrats, to draft legislation “to reform the board and operations ofMES.”
If the General Assembly issues subpoenas toMcGrath or others, it would be the first time in nearly 15 years that it’s used subpoena powers.
The last time that the General Assembly issued subpoenas also involvedHogan. Hogan served as appointments secretary under Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. from 2003 through 2007, when that administration was accused of orchestrating the firing of long-serving employees throughout state government and replacing them with Republican loyalists.
Ehrlich, at the time, was the first Republican governor inMaryland inmore than 30 years, and hewas accused of going too far in putting his stamp on the state workforce.
An employee, Joseph F. Steffen Jr., admitted to going from agency to agency — adopting the nickname “prince of darkness” and putting a grim reaper statue on his desk — and finding employees to fire.
Steffen, who died in 2017, had told lawmakers in 2006 that he coordinated the firings with Hogan; Hogan told a different story, saying he never asked Steffen for advice on firings.
Hogan said at the time that the administration replaced only 4% of the 7,000-plus at-will employees who could legally be fired without cause.
“Not a single person can ever say, ‘Iwas fired because I’m a Democrat,’” Hogan told lawmakers.