As Larry Hogan officially takes office as Maryland's new governor Wednesday in Annapolis, the clock starts ticking for hundreds of appointed positions in counties around the state in which occupants serve at the pleasure of the governor.
Of particular interest in Harford County, will be three seats on the Harford County Board of Education that Hogan will fill by July 1, but the changeover in state administrations will have other repercussions locally, too.
The governor gets to appoint the county's Board of Elections that will be in charge of running the 2016 and 2018 elections, the judicial nominating commission, whose members have a key role in any appointments to both the local District and Circuit court benches and future members of the Harford Community College Board of Trustees, as vacancies arise on the college's governing body.
In addition to purely local positions, whose patronage is controlled by the governor, a Republican, there are scores of state regulatory boards and commissions, some with considerable power, that likewise will see new faces. Among them are the Maryland Public Service Commission, Maryland Racing Commission, Maryland Home Improvement Commission, Maryland Workers Compensation Commission and Maryland Parole Commission, all of which have had Harford County residents in the past.
The key member of Hogan's cabinet who will be the conduit for these appointments is also a Harford County resident, James Fielder Jr., the governor's new appointments secretary – or patronage chief.
Fielder, one of the first people Hogan named to his new administration, has been serving as chief administrator for the town of Bel Air since January 2014. Tuesday was his final day on that job.
He said in a recent interview that he's aware of the big job he has ahead of him, and is looking forward to the challenge.
"There are a lot of positions, not just in Harford County, but everywhere in the state," he said.
Fielder, who lives near Bel Air, will be the second Harford County resident to hold the strings on the "green bag," the velvet bag historically used to deliver gubernatorial patronage appointments to the State Senate for confirmation. Constance Beims, of Darlington, was appointments secretary during the second term of former Gov. Harry R. Hughes, between 1983 and 1987.
Fielder said he and Hogan became friendly when they both served in the cabinet of Gov. Bob Ehrlich from 2003 to 2007. Fielder was secretary of licensing and regulation and Hogan was appointments secretary, the post Fielder is taking over in the new administration.
Shortly after he was elected in November, Hogan asked him if he would be interested in serving in the new administration, Fielder said.
"I wasn't looking to leave the job here in Bel Air, which I really enjoy," he explained. "I wasn't interested in running another state department, which I had already done twice." (In addition to running the Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation, Fielder had previously served as secretary of the Department of Business and Economic Development near the end of Gov. Parris Glendening's administration in the early 2000s.)
When Hogan broached the idea of becoming appointments secretary, Fielder said that offer was too good to turn down.
"This is an opportunity to make a real difference in state government, having a say in who we are going to bring in with us," he said.
School board changes
The school board appointments won't be the most immediate local positions with which the new government has to deal, Fielder said, but the time for filling them still will come up pretty quickly.
Phase-in of the legislation approved by the Maryland General Assembly in 2009 that created Harford's first in the state, bifurcated school board, is due to be completed July 1, when six board members elected by county voters last November will take their seats along with three members to be appointed by Hogan.
The set-up, which has caused no end of confusion among many in the general public, will work like this:
Current members Robert Frisch (County Council District B), Nancy Reynolds (County Council District D) and Thomas Fitzpatrick (County Council District F) were all elected to full terms beginning July 1.
They will be joined by newcomers Jansen Robinson (County Council District A), Joseph Voskuhl (County Council District C) and Rachel Gauthier (County Council District E), who were elected in November, but who had not been on the board.
That leaves six members who could be leaving, depending what Hogan may do with his appointments: James Thornton, Cassandra Beverley, Joseph Hau, Rick Grambo, Alysson Krchnavy and Arthur Kaff.
Among that group, only Kaff, who was defeated in the election by Gauthier, and Hau, who did not run for a seat, have publicly expressed a desire to continue on the board.
Depending who may eventually be appointed to the three seats controlled by the governor, membership of the school board that begins in office on July 1 could be markedly different from the board that hired Superintendent Barbara Canavan for a full four-year contract last winter, after she had served a year as interim superintendent. Canavan's contract will come up for renewal in the months before the next state election in 2018 in which six board seats and the governor's office will be at stake.
HCC, election board makeover
The terms of every one of the nine members of the Harford Community College Board of Trustees will expire during Hogan's term, some as early as this year and others as late as 2018, according to the Maryland Manual online.
One board member represents each of the six county council districts and three serve at large. All nine are appointed by the governor.
Composition of the Board of Elections will also undergo a remake in the coming months. The board, consisting of three members and two alternates, is appointed for the duration of each new gubernatorial term, subject to State Senate confirmation.
Under state law, three members come from the majority party and two from the minority party.
During the eight-year administration of Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, the Republican Party gained a majority of voter registrations over Democrats in Harford; however, control of the election board remained nominally in the hands of the Democrats.
In addition to conducting each state and local election, the board also rules on issues involving individual voter registrations and ballots and the eligibility of candidates for local positions.
Judicial nominations
The changes Hogan's team is expected to make in the Judicial Nominating Commission for Harford County also bear watching.
The commission has 13 members, nine appointed by the governor and four by the Bar Association of Harford County, with the governor designating the chairman. By past executive orders, governors bound themselves to selecting district and circuit judges from among those nominated by the local commissions.
O'Malley's appointments to the Circuit Court bench created a number of firsts in Harford.
When O'Malley became governor in early 2007, five white men were sitting circuit judges, three of whom reached the mandatory retirement age of 70 during O'Malley's tenure. Selected to replace them were Judges Angela Eaves, M. Elizabeth Bowen and Yolanda Curtin. Not only are the trio the first women Circuit Court judges in Harford, Eaves is the first African-American and Curtin the first Latino-American.
O'Malley also appointed Judges Susan Hazlett (a replacement for Eaves after she went to the Circuit Court) and David Carey to Harford's District Court and reappointed Judge Mimi Cooper.
There are three potential vacancies approaching on the Harford's courts during the four years of Hogan's term.
District Judge Victor Butanis will complete his second 10-year term on the bench in 2016 and Hazlett will complete her first in 2018. Circuit Court Chief Administrative Judge William O. Carr, one of the longest serving judges in the state, will complete his second 15-year term in 2017.
All three would be eligible for reappointment, typically a formality; however, Carr also will reach the mandatory retirement age of 70 in October 2018, which all but assures Hogan will be appointing a least one new Harford judge in the next four years.
In addition to appointing a majority of the members of the local judicial nominating commission, the new governor will also appoint 12 members, including the chairman, of the 17-member commission that nominates judges for the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and Maryland Court of Appeals. The state bar association appoints the other five members.
Bel Air-based lawyer and Harford resident Augustus F. "Gus" Brown IV is a member of the Appellate Courts Nominating Commission.