Hogan’s appointments chief defends use of hiring questionnaire

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The head of Gov. Larry Hogan’s appointments office told legislators Tuesday that his office is not illegally interfering with state agencies as they attempt to hire employees.

Appointments Secretary Chris Cavey, in his first comments to the Joint Committee on Fair Practices and State Personnel Oversight, said his office and the governor are not using the hiring process or an online questionnaire for applicants as a tool to weed out political opponents.

“The Hogan administration has one goal and one goal only: to find the very best people to serve the state of Maryland,” said Cavey.

A Maryland law passed in 2007 following hearings into firings under Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich prohibits the governor’s office from a role in nonpolitical hires. Many of those incidents involved Joseph Steffen, an Ehrlich staffer who embraced his role as a hatchet man, kept a figurine of Darth Vader on his desk and referred to himself as “the Prince of Darkness.”

Cavey said that during his time in the office, Hogan has hired 581 Democrats, 499 Republicans and 138 applicants who identified as “other.”

Sen. Clarence Lam, D-Howard and Baltimore County, said ongoing complaints raised by anonymous state employees “still raises quite a bit of concern about the hiring practices these departments are going through. We’re concerned about hiring. What is the process that’s taking place in these departments and what are the departments being directed to forward to the appointments office or what are they informing applicants about?”

Cavey said his office, which includes four employees, doesn’t require or even ask agencies to hand off potential hires for vetting. Instead, he said, the office has made the service available as an option. Few agencies use the service and he said he handles about three requests a month and rejects requests involving positions that are covered by current law.

“The appointments office is not involved in the hiring process for any merit system employees whatsoever,” he said, adding that his office makes it clear to applicants that the referring agency and not the appointments office makes final hiring decisions.

The vetting process includes the use of publicly available sources including Google, the state courts and ethics commission and elections online databases and searches of public social media.

“It’s not rocket science as to going on the internet finding Google or Twitter or whatever we use to vet people with,” said Cavey.  “The best an agency gets is a ‘thumbs up, everything’s great what a fine candidate you have,’ or ‘you might want to take a deeper look,” said Cavey.

The goal, according to Cavey, is to identify what he called “stuff” that could be a potential red flag for hiring, including serious crimes, hate speech or racist comments, or conflicts of interest. In one instance, Cavey said, officials identified a candidate who had a criminal record that included weapons, assault and domestic violence charges.

“That was a pretty dramatic thing when we saw it,” said Cavey. “For something that dramatic, we threw up a pretty bright red flag and asked that the agency look deeper.”

Earlier this year, the legislature passed a bill that strengthened existing state law prohibiting the governor’s office from getting involved in the hiring of most state employees excluding heads of departments and classes of special or political positions.

Hogan vetoed that bill, calling it an unconstitutional law that “will impede the Executive Branch’s ability to do business and have a chilling effect on our efforts to recruit qualified candidates. Personnel matters are confidential by law for a reason. Applicants for jobs trust their potential employer to be discreet and professional in every way. Having every movement logged and reported will have a detrimental effect on applicants for positions that affect every Marylander.”

Lam said employees and applicants complain that the administration is putting a political thumb on the hiring and promotion process.

“We’re certainly concerned about these sorts of questions, particularly the more probing ones and also some of the more personal ones seem to run contrary to Equal Opportunity Employment law,” said Lam.

Lam said some found the questions about marital status, occupations of spouses and about children invasive and out of line.

“So you can’t imagine a situation where some young person may be considered for a position and somebody in the hiring authority asks if they’re married that that might make them uncomfortable?” said Lam.

Cavey said he had not seen anyone become uncomfortable with the question, which is designed to weed out potential conflicts of interest.

“How do you find otherwise?” said Cavey.

He said children are never asked about.

“I take that actually as an offense,” he said.