Commissioners shocked to learn that 84 county
staffers make over $70,000 annually

Budget boss Elaine Kramer at $136,299, makes sure the county stays flush, for good reason, so her pay rolls on...her assistant, Jeanette Cudmore, makes $85,030 per year.  Right, is St. Mary's County Administrator, who had never worked as an administrator before being promoted from tourism director, is paid $140,000 a year. Savich, who approved a county employee's trip to Paris last year, this year (so far) has cut back on out of state travel for staff following the disclosure that county employees had spent thousands of dollars going on junkets to Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach and Philly, as well as Paris, France. Savich promoted to a new position in the past year, as his Chief of Staff, Sabrina Hecht at a salary of $73,000.
ST. MARY'S TODAY photos

By Kenneth C. Rossignol

ST. MARY’S TODAY

LEONARDTOWN --- As the St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners attempts to get a handle on their proposed budget with cuts on the horizon from federal and state sources of revenue, combined with a looming national economic crisis, salaries for county employees continues to soar with a record number of employees making top dollar salaries.

ST. MARY’S TODAY filed a Public Information Request for the number of county employees, not including the Board of Education, who are paid more than $70,000 annually.

The request reveals that the number of staff making more than $70,000 a year now numbers 84.

“You would expect that the directors of departments would be in that range and I would expect senior people to be up there so I would guess 40,” said Commissioner Larry Jarboe (R. Golden Beach) when the veteran commissioner was asked to hazard a guess.
 “To learn that there are 84 such county staffers shows how much the payroll creeps up and if we want to avoid the layoffs other counties are doing, we need to do a better job of cutting out unnecessary expenditures and we need to take another look at this proposal to create five new county employees with this proposed human services consolidation,” said Jarboe.
“I would guess around 50 people, with some of our staff having been here a long time,” said Commissioner Dan Raley (D. Great Mills). 
When told the number was 84, Raley was surprised and expressed shock at some of the pay levels of senior Sheriff’s deputies.

“They are looking for 2 % raises on top of that,” said Raley. “The consolidation we are looking at that Commissioner Jarboe is concerned about is actually a good thing, those are grant funded employees who were shifted under the McKay reorganization that just didn’t work out, these people were sent to Parks and Recreation and with the positions having to do with alcohol and drug prevention and highway safety, they don’t belong there.”
Commissioner Kenny Dement (R. Piney Point) guessed that the number of county employees making more than  $70,000 annually would be about 25.  When told that the figure was 84, Dement gulped and said “Oh my God, I have to go,” and hung up the phone.

Jarboe said that perhaps Commissioner Raley has a good point about the consolidations of departments and Raley insisted that if the grant money doesn’t continue then the jobs won’t.
Jarboe said that he thinks that all human services should be together and that one director can provide supervision and direction for citizen services regardless of the ages served, thereby eliminating some of the high dollar director positions.
Asked if he had seen news reports of Montgomery County laying off 225 employees in their proposed budget, Raley said that he had and he was very concerned about cutting spending proposals in the budget cycle in order to prevent cutting county employees here in St. Mary’s.

“We have a serious financial crisis in this country and it all flows downhill to us, we better be making cuts we wouldn’t have considered just a few months or even weeks ago,” said Raley.

“Its time to take a look at the non-governmental organizations who line up with their hands out each year,” said Jarboe.  “In order to maintain the constant yield, by dropping the budget spending proposal by about 8 cents, we are going to have to take an axe to these requests and stop them all.”

When asked why the county board of commissioners thinks it is fair to the taxpayer to force taxpayers to cough up their money to the treasurer in the form of real estate and income taxes and then have the commissioners turn around and dip into tax funds to make donations, always in the name of “The St. Mary’s Board of Commissioners” to groups such as the Tidewater Music Festival at St. Mary’s College” which got $10,000 last year, the Chamber of Commerce, the Navy Alliance, which has gotten $25,000 a year for many years, and dozens of other non-governmental private groups, Raley said that if the Board didn’t fund them, the services they provide might fall to the county.  Even the Minority Business Alliance has gotten tax funds in the past and like many of the non-profits either cannot or does not account for how the tax money is spent.
Dement responded to the question about the cuts to the proposed budget by saying that he realizes the critical status of the economy and the fact that citizens are furious about their property reassessments.
“We have to find the ways to cut this budget, show me the way,” said Dement.

The Board may be finding the way by cutting all non-essential purchases of property, equipment and improvements to parks and programs if it intends to keep from slashing jobs.

After ten years of overflowing coffers, the St. Mary’s Board, which includes two commissioners who are restricted by a term limitation from running again, may agree that getting out of the hot seat would be a good thing.

Watch for the print edition this weekend for a list of county staff who makes over $70,000 annually. 
READER FEEDBACK Question: Should the St. Mary's Board cut spending in order lower the tax rate to negate the tripling of real estate assessments?
Send your views to: staff1@stmarystoday.com

 READER FEEDBACK $140,000 per year may actually be a bargain for a County Administrator considering the last one received $80,000 to stay home for six months. And the one before that received $408,000 to stay home. And the one before that also received $100,000 to stay home.
The question is, how much is it going to cost us when this guy stops coming to work?
http://www.stmarystoday.com/News/Forrest_Gets_Payoff.html 
Ralph (Please withhold my name)