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Wont pay students campaigned { May 1 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.campaign01may01,0,5530383.story?coll=bal-local-headlineshttp://www.sunspot.net/news/local/bal-md.campaign01may01,0,5530383.story?coll=bal-local-headlines
Students still await pay for aid to Ehrlich
Recent court ruling won't affect issue, official says
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By Walter F. Roche Jr.
Sun Staff
Originally published May 1, 2003
It has been just shy of six months since that cloudy day in November when Sherita Bellinger's two children manned the polls handing out fliers for then-gubernatorial candidate Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.
Six months, but still no paycheck.
Bellinger's children, Crystal, 13, and Billy, 16, were among about 100 college, high school and middle school students recruited to work Election Day for what turned out to be Ehrlich's successful campaign effort.
But Crystal and Billy, who worked from dawn to dusk outside an Upper Marlboro high school, never got paid and - despite a key court ruling last week - it appears they'll go on waiting.
"I definitely feel they should be paid," Bellinger said of her two children when told about the court ruling. "They got nothing."
In a decision dated April 22, Prince George's Circuit Judge Richard H. Sothoron Jr. declared unconstitutional a state law that bans the payment of Election Day poll workers. His ruling threw out criminal charges that had been filed against three people tied to the Ehrlich campaign and the Election Day campaigning efforts.
Asked if the court decision might clear the way for the students who worked the polls in Prince George's County to be paid, an Ehrlich campaign official said, in effect, no.
"The Ehrlich campaign made no promises to these people for payment on Election Day," said John Reith, the Ehrlich gubernatorial campaign's finance director. "No official in a position of authority made those statements."
Bellinger and others say the promise of payment was made Nov. 3, when the recruits attended a meeting in New Carrollton to get the instructions for their Election Day assignments. Many of those recruited were from Bowie State University, while others were students at high schools and middle schools in Prince George's.
Lillie Mello, another recruit, said the workers were first told they would be paid $125 each on election night, then later informed they would be paid the next day.
"They promised to pay us. Told us they'd pay us Wednesday and then they just disappeared," said Mello, one of a handful of adults who joined with the students for the recruiting call.
"So now they can pay me. There's no reason not to pay," Mello said, referring to the recent court ruling.
She added that the promise came from Rashida Hogg, one of the indicted Ehrlich campaign workers cleared by Sothoron's ruling.
Ehrlich's campaign committee paid Hogg and co-defendant Steven Martin $1,700 and $2,300, respectively, a few weeks before the election, according to state campaign finance records.
The charges against Hogg, Martin and Shirley Brookins were brought after an investigation by State Prosecutor Stephen Montanarelli.
Montanarelli said yesterday that he has not decided whether to appeal Sothoron's decision dismissing all of the charges.
Brookins was involved in recruiting about 150 people from a Washington homeless shelter to work the polls Nov. 5. Most of the homeless, however, did get paid the day after the election.
About a dozen homeless people who weren't paid on that day later got assistance from the DC Justice Employment Center, a Washington advocacy group. Judith Conti, an attorney with the employment center, said she was able to get payments for the workers after "considerable browbeating."
Conti said her agency would be willing to make the same effort on behalf of the unpaid students, such as Sherita Bellinger's two children.
"To prey on the homeless and students, groups that have few resources to begin with, is a particularly dastardly way to avoid paying wages," Conti said.
Sherita Bellinger said that what is even more troubling than the fact that the students were not paid was the negative message it sent to her children about the election process.
"It's the principle," she said.
Copyright © 2003, The Baltimore Sun
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