Leonardtown, MD — A consultant has confirmed what St. Mary’s County Sheriff Tim Cameron has been saying all along: his police officers are underpaid. The study presented March 1 to the Board of St. Mary’s County Commissioners shows law enforcement officers base salaries lag behind neighboring counties by 9.8 percent and correctional officers by 7 percent.
The commissioners now have to decide what to do with the information as they plow through the budget for the next fiscal year. At a budget workshop later in the day Cameron said he’d have to go over the data and revise his budget.
Cameron has contended that the low salaries make it difficult to attract and retain officers and his department has a number of vacancies. The consultants for the Frank and Wheeler Group, L:LC said it appeared that St. Mary’s does retain officers longer than adjacent counties. Consultant Michael Franks said that might be based on non-pay intangibles, such as leadership and quality of life.
The price tag to cover bringing the base salaries in line would be $1.14 million plus fringe benefits (about 25 percent). In addition to the base salary increase the consultants recommend a four-percent adjustment for officers at mid-level and two-percent for those above or below. An alternative would be to put everyone on a higher grade.
During the budget work session Commissioner John O’Connor suggested the sheriff turn back five new positions budgeted but never hired to help cover the costs of the pay increases.
The consultants say by the time a law enforcement officer reaches a mid-range salary they are lagging behind by 12.1 percent. Correctional officers are 16.9 percent although they were only able to collect data for Calvert and Charles for that category and not Prince George’s County.
The commissioners are expected to tackle the sheriff’s budget during their March 8 budget workshop.
Contact Dick Myers at dick.myers@thebaynet.com