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AGO explains status of some BB staff
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Posted on Apr 14 2006
The Attorney General’s Office has released a legal opinion that effectively spells out the administration’s authority to terminate some employees of the previous governor who had not converted to civil service status.
Attorney General Matthew T. Gregory issued the opinion to the Office of Personnel Management, which had raised questions regarding the effect of Public Law 13-1 to employees in the Governor’s Office who were civil service employees before the effective date of the 2002 law and whose positions became exempt from the civil service system pursuant to the law.
Enacted on Feb. 13, 2002, P.L. 13-1 stripped the staff of the Governor’s Office of their civil service employment status. P.L. 13-1 also provided that any Commonwealth government employee who lost their civil service status as a result of the act had, for three years, a reemployment right to any civil service position for which he was qualified and a right to transfer to a civil service position.
Gregory noted that the transition period ended on Feb. 13, 2005.
“It is my opinion that those employees who elected to remain in excepted service positions in the office of the governor and lieutenant governor and did not exercise reemployment rights and request a transfer to a civil service position, are excepted service employees,” Gregory said.
“Because the three-year transition period within which those rights could have been exercised has expired, those employees no longer have reemployment rights or rights to transfer to a civil service position pursuant to Public Law 13-1,” he added. (Agnes E. Donato)
