Calvert County’s Compensation Review Board (CRB) recently decided the county’s elected officials needed to share the pain of the world’s troubled economy. During the Jan. 19 meeting of the Calvert Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), Sheryl Jones Alu, who chairs the CRB, announced the seven-person panel decided there should be no raises for the commissioners, judges of the orphans court, county treasurer and sheriff.

In a memo to Commissioners’ President Wilson H. Parran [D], Alu stated the CRB was unanimous in its decision to recommend no pay raises for the judges, treasurer and sheriff. The vote regarding compensation for commissioners, however was 6-to-1. Alu declined to identify the dissenting review board member.

In addition to considering annual salaries, the CRB also took the benefits packages of the elected positions and decided they should remain in effect until 2013.

Alu confirmed the “current fiscal climate and not knowing where we are going to be in four years� carried considerable weight when the CRB made its decisions on each office. They also relied on research.

“The board scrutinized statistical and demographic data obtained from a questionnaire that was submitted to six Maryland counties with similarities to Calvert County,� Alu stated. “Requests were made of the elected officials for their recommendations for any salary or benefit modifications. All the information gleaned from these questionnaires and recommendations was compiled in statistical spreadsheets for each respective position.�

“You’ve made a very good decision,� said Commissioner Barbara A. Stinnett [D], who noted county government staff did not get pay raises for fiscal year 2010.

Had the CRB decided to change the salaries, the modifications would not have taken effect until the winners of the 2010 election were sworn into office.

The BOCC voted unanimously to accept the CRB’s recommendation and forward it to the Calvert County delegation to the Maryland General Assembly.

E-mail Marty Madden at editorial@calvertindependent.com.