O'Malley: No I Should be able to fire for political reasons

It would be bad theater if it weren't 100% true:

Gov. Martin O'Malley's administration plans to appeal a judge's ruling that the firing of a midlevel Maryland Department of Transportation employee was illegal, a spokesman for the department said today.

"We are taking the appropriate steps to have the ruling reviewed," said Jack Cahalan, the department spokesman, who declined to comment in detail about the procedure, because it is a personnel matter....

...The O'Malley administration has stood by the decision to fire Maddalone, but held off last week on saying whether an appeal would be made to circuit court, until legal counsel could review the judge's decision.

Maddalone, who does not have a college degree and worked as a professional ice dancer, had been employed with the state since 2003, when he had an entry-level position in former Republican Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s office....

....Maryland Department of Transportation Secretary John Porcari testified during the administrative law review that he fired Maddalone because he wanted to reorganize the OEPES, which is involved in homeland security. He said he was hoping to find people with experience in homeland security to fill the positions.

But the judge noted in her ruling that Porcari conceded that he never looked into Maddalone's personnel file, relying instead on what he had heard in news accounts that questioned whether Maddalone had played a role on controversial firings during the Ehrlich administration and his career as an ice dancer.

I bolded the money quote. An admission by a cabinet-level O'Malley Administration official that a Republican was fired for political reasons; something that no Ehrlich Administration official ever publicly admitted to.

You know, all of this is really kinda goofy to get excited about. The fact of the matter is that all of the employees in question from both the Ehrlich and O'Malley Administrations were at-will employees and (theoretically) served at the pleasure of the Governor (notwithstanding the Kangaroo Court's definition of at-will). The only reason that we're still even talking about this is the fact that Democrats spent years whining about the plight of their brethren under a Republican Governor, a complaint that quietly went away upon O'Malley's victory.

At this point, what goes around comes around. But good grief, can't we scale back on the number of at-will employees if they don't actually serve "at-will?"