By Adam Pagnucco.
One of last month’s most read stories was Elrich Wants to Create a New Job for Term Limited Council Member. That post revealed that the county executive sent over legislation to create a new job for work on broadband and named the intended recipient: former Council Member Craig Rice, whose tenure in office was ended by term limits. That was supposed to be a secret but Elrich’s assistant let it slip through an email.
Well, it’s a secret no longer as Elrich made it official on Friday. He sent the council a formal packet naming Rice and enclosing his resume. I am not printing Rice’s resume because I refuse to dox him, but here are extracts from the packet proving that this new job is being created for him.
Some members of the council are clearly uncomfortable about the idea of passing legislation that creates a new job for a former colleague. The Government Operations Committee discussed the bill last Thursday, and without mentioning Rice, approved the bill with a three-year sunset introduced by Council Member Kate Stewart. The other two council members voting to approve the bill as amended were Andrew Friedson and Sidney Katz.
I have no idea what these council members intend to accomplish with a sunset amendment. The sunset evades the issue of whether we should be passing bills to create unfunded brand new jobs for ex-politicians. It also does not address whether the job’s duties could be performed by an existing office with an $18.8 million budget and 57.5 full-time equivalent positions. Every now and then, a council member will bring up the executive’s nearly forgotten and never executed restructuring initiative and Friedson did so on Thursday. But if the council passes legislation like this, why would the executive – or anyone else – take them seriously?
One more thing. Back in 2013, the council of that time passed a 25% salary increase for future council members. The county employee unions cited that bump to advocate for salary hikes for their members and Robin Ficker used it in his successful campaign to pass term limits. Little things can have big political costs.
As Elrich’s new budget nears release, we shall see if history repeats itself.