Personal notes and memoranda written in 2006 by Alison Asti show that she thought she was about to be fired as executive director of the Maryland Stadium Authority because she had declined to support then-Baltimore Mayor Martin O’Malley’s campaign for governor.
The documents, obtained this month by The Washington Times, follow other examples in which senior state officials — Democrats and Republicans alike — have said they were threatened with dismissal for failing to politically support Mr. O’Malley.
Mrs. Asti was appointed director of the Stadium Authority by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich, a Republican, in 2004. Her five-year, $1 million contract was declared invalid, and she was removed from the job in September 2007, 10 months after Mr. O’Malley’s election.
“Mayor O’Malley personally called me today to ask me if I would support his candidacy for governor,” Mrs. Asti wrote in a letter of memorandum about a 2006 conversation with Mr. O’Malley at the time of his campaign. “I advised that I do not get involved in politics and am all about substance.”
In a subsequent, undated personal note that she kept as executive director, Mrs. Asti said a mutual friend of hers and the governor’s told her that the call from Mr. O’Malley had been her “chance” to save her job.
“I took that to mean that I would be fired as punishment for not agreeing to support the governor’s campaign,” wrote Mrs. Asti, a Democrat.
Mr. O’Malley was approached about Mrs. Asti’s accusations after a press conference in Baltimore on Tuesday, but a spokeswoman said Mr. O’Malley could not take any more questions because he had to catch a flight to Pittsburgh to campaign for presidential candidate Barack Obama. An O’Malley spokesman declined to comment for this article.
At the time of Mrs. Asti’s firing, Mr. O’Malley told The Times that he was looking for state employees who are “committed to the mission of this administration.” In the case of independent boards whose members are not appointed by the governor, “it will take a little longer than in direct appointments,” he said.
Other state officials have leveled charges similar to Mrs. Asti’s against the governor.
Former Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan, who ran against Mr. O’Malley in the 2006 Democratic primary, told The Washington Times last month that the governor threatened to fire him from his job at the University of Maryland if he appeared at a dinner with Mr. Ehrlich. Mr. Duncan later recanted the statement through a university spokesman but resigned last week.
This summer, board members of the multibillion-dollar University of Maryland Medical System said they were pressured to hire a candidate favored by Mr. O’Malley as their new chief executive officer. Members who voted instead for an Ehrlich supporter were told by a top O’Malley aide to resign the day after the vote, The Washington Times reported.
Mrs. Asti declined to speak to The Times for this story. However, former authority board Chairman Robert L. McKinney and former board member Denny Mather said Mrs. Asti had distributed identical notes to members of the board immediately after her ouster.
Mr. McKinney said he had urged Mrs. Asti after the initial call from Mr. O’Malley to keep notes about her interactions with his administration.
Mr. Mather said Mrs. Asti also had spoken with board members about the call from Mr. O’Malley. He said she also had been asked to contribute to his campaign.
In her notes, Mrs. Asti said she thought Mr. O’Malley also held a grudge against her for being “too close” to former Gov. William Donald Schaefer and Baltimore Oriole owner Peter Angelos — two of Mr. O’Malley’s most vocal adversaries.
Many people last year said the governor’s disdain for Mrs. Asti was clear, but the notes provide fresh insight into her firing, which involved a review of her contract by the State’s Attorney’s Office and an evaluation by Frederick W. Puddester, who was named by Mr. O’Malley as chairman of the stadium authority.
“I asked Fred if he would be willing to ’judge me on my performance,’ ” Mrs. Asti wrote in a personal note.”He said he did not think that would be possible. He then said something like he ’would not want my reputation to be damaged.’ … I took notes about this conversation. I felt threatened by the remarks about ruining my reputation.”
Mr. Puddester, who is leading the governor’s campaign to legalize slot machines in Maryland, said he could not comment on the memo because the issue is a personnel matter.
Shortly before Mrs. Asti’s ouster, legislative auditors released a report that criticized the stadium authority for many problems, including not collecting rent that the auditors said was owed by the Baltimore Orioles.
The audit was used to bolster the case for Mrs. Asti’s firing, but the stadium authority dropped its attempts to collect the rent from the Orioles one month after Mrs. Asti was fired.
State employees who set policy — including Cabinet secretaries and top aides — can be fired for any reason, although other employees are protected from political firings. It is not clear whether Mrs. Asti’s job as executive director is considered a policymaking role. Many supporters have said she had a clause in her contract that should have allowed her to stay on as the authority’s legal counsel after she was removed as executive director.
State School Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick, a highly visible O’Malley adversary, has survived an ouster attempt.
Mr. O’Malley earlier this year attempted to restructure the state school board to allow him to remove Mrs. Grasmick, an Ehrlich supporter who backed a state takeover of failing Baltimore schools when Mr. O’Malley was the city mayor.
He called a truce with the longtime schools chief after an intervention by lawmakers who did not want the 2008 General Assembly session to be dominated by the political grudge match.
Mr. O’Malley’s skirmishes with political opponents appear to contradict a central tenet of his campaigns and stump speeches as governor - that he was “going to make government work again” by judging state employees on their professional skills rather than political affiliations.
Mr. Ehrlich was accused of heavy-handed firings when he was governor from 2003 to last year.
Democratic leaders led a $1 million investigation into complaints that he fired Democratic staffers because of their political affiliation. The investigation resulted in no charges, and there has been no call for a similar investigation into Mr. O’Malley.
Republicans have said they would be surprised to see any serious investigation into Mr. O’Malley’s hiring practices.
“There should be [an investigation], but there can’t be, because there’s nobody who could do it,” Mr. Mather said in reference to Democrats’ control of the governorship and both chambers of the legislature.
“I think it’s all the same pattern. … If you were appointed by Ehrlich, then you were appointed by the wrong guy,” he said.
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