The Vote Wes Moore Didn’t Cast
When the Board of Public Works voted October 7 to approve taxpayer-funded lawyers for Gov. Wes Moore, the governor wasn’t in the room. According to State Treasurer Dereck Davis, who described the meeting to the Maryland Wire in a phone call Friday, Moore was tied up in meetings — Davis believed they were Democratic Governors Association meetings — and Lt. Gov. Aruna Miller sat in as his proxy.
Then Miller did the thing everyone had been arguing about all week: she recused herself from the vote on the governor’s legal bills. That left the decision to the board’s two other members — Comptroller Brooke Lierman and Treasurer Davis himself.
Davis said Lierman offered an impassioned defense of the governor before the vote. It passed with no objections: the state will pay for Moore’s defense, at this stage of the case.
That is, by the way, exactly the outcome former Attorney General Brian Frosh had suggested in advance — that the lieutenant governor substitute for Moore to avoid the appearance of the governor voting on his own legal bill. Whether by design or by scheduling accident, the board ended up where Frosh said it should be: the governor’s chair filled, the governor’s vote not cast.
