The Washington Times reported yesterday that the resignations of 10 board members from the University of Maryland Medical System came after the board selected John P. McDaniel, a former MedStar Health chief executive officer, to serve as chief executive officer of the University of Maryland Medical System over O’Malley’s pick Bob Chrencik.

Apparently with O’Malley as Governor, everything comes with a price.

To disregard his preference will get you fired.

To be appointed to an “independent” board, you have to contribute to the campaign… or subsidize a $500,000 loan.

What is happening here?

“There is a startling trend developing all across Maryland,” James Pelura, chairman of the Maryland Republican Party, told the Times in response. “Governor Martin O’Malley has been repeatedly interfering in the affairs of nonpartisan local boards and state boards to extract political vengeance and reward political allies.”

O’Malley’s appetite is out of control.

Since taking office two years ago, Mr. O’Malley has been focused in two areas:  binge spending and political purging. His first, well-documented purging attempt failed to remove state schools Superintendent Nancy S. Grasmick.

However, he was successful in removing Alison L. Asti from her job running the Maryland Stadium Authority after an audit showed severe mismanagement of the authority. However, a former authority chairman, Robert L. McKinney, also an Ehrlich appointed, indicated that the problems occurred with the agency prior to Mrs. Asti’s appointment.

Nine of the ten “resignees” reportedly received telephone notice, terminating their board service.

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Martin O’Malley has taken a trick from the book of attorney John P. Coale, O’Malley’s latest political appointee to the board of the University of Maryland Medical System. Coale spoke to the New York Times (”Cash Collectors For Kerry Race Run the Gamut” August 15, 2004) about how he did his job as a fundraiser for the failed John Kerry presidential bid.  According to the Times,

Whatever their motives or backgrounds, most fund-raisers [like Coale] have had extraordinary success in tapping into their own circles, opening their Rolodexes to call on business associates, friends and relatives and asking them to contribute or become fund-raisers themselves.

”We had a whole network of attorneys from the tobacco wars that I got money from,” said John P. Coale, a trial lawyer who began raising money for the campaign in 2002 and eventually recruited others to help out. ”You get to the point where you’re managing other people.”

It would seem that O’Malley knows how to do this.

Just look at what has happened to the UMMS board in the last month.  The Washington Times reported on Thursday that O’Malley has appointed seven new members, including Coale, appointed on August 11th, and Alan Fleishmann, who ran former Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s failed gubernatorial bid in 2002, appointed on July 28th.

O’Malley also tagged Stephen A. Burch, former president of Comcast Cable, who has been under public scrutiny for hiring politically connected people, like the two sons of imprisoned former Senator Thomas L. Bromwell.

Additional new board appointees include: Orlan Johnson; Dr. Georges Benjamin; Louise Gonzales; and Joseph Tydings, who currently sits on the Maryland State Legislature.

And that doesn’t even include Mike Busch, Catherine Pugh, Ulysses Currie, all current members of the Maryland State Legislature.

An O’Malley spokeswoman was quoted with the following:

The governor has made appointments that he believes will serve the long-term interests of the medical system, and the doctors, researchers, students and support staff that have made the University of Maryland’s Medical System what it is today.

With O’Malley’s approval rating hovering in the 30 percent range, appointing political supporters and wealthy political patrons to high visibility positions not only can be construed as paybacks for contributions in the past, but insurance for the future, providing O’Malley both political leverage and fundraising capacity at his fingertips: cronyism at its finest.

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