Howard County employees will likely face another year of unpaid furloughs, according to county executive Ken Ulman.
"Based on current projections, I assume furloughs will be repeated," Ulman told reporters after his annual State of the County speech before more than 400 members of the county Chamber of Commerce at Turf Valley on Tuesday. He also said he will not ask for tax increases in fiscal 2011, but won't decide until March whether to dip into the county's $47.5 million Rainy Day Fund.
"We'll have to manage through our existing revenue declines," Ulman said, rather than raise taxes. He told the large crowd that local income tax revenues are down 7 percent, and the newest property tax assessments are down 23 percent, though revenue from that source is still expected to grow about 3 percent next fiscal year, officials have said.
Howard's nearly 2,000 general county workers got no cost-of-living pay raise this year and lost four days' pay between Christmas and New Year's, while department heads and elected officials gave up five days' pay to save a total of about $1.8 million.
Dale Chase, president of the union representing nearly 300 blue-collar county workers, said his members are upset, especially because public safety workers aren't sharing the furlough pain. County teachers weren't furloughed either, and they got a 1 percent pay raise.
"I don't think my members can take anymore," said Chase, president of local 3085 of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees. "My members are hurting, too," he said, noting that while their pay didn't increase, their health care premiums did. Furloughs cause "a lot of disruption in the work force," he said.
Ulman is also pushing for a statewide waiver of the Maryland law that requires local governments to maintain school system funding at or above this year's level, or face a major loss of state aid. Howard County has always voluntarily boosted school funding, Ulman said, but forcing that continued support during the recession will be counterproductive.
"It would be a deterrent to provide any increase in good years," he said. Satisfying the maintenance of effort for fiscal 2011 would mean $8 million more for schools. Combined with a growing gap in revenues, that would force Ulman to find all his savings in the one-third of the budget he controls directly.
Meanwhile, the County Council is wrestling with its own potentially embarrassing dilemma -- whether to vote for higher pay for the next council and executive, who take office in December.
The five council members are to vote Monday night on the issue. A citizens' commission recommended a $500 one-time increase for the five County Council members, plus annual increases tied to the consumer price index. The executive would get a $2,500-a-year increase plus the inflation-based raise. Council members now earn $53,400 and the executive is paid $160,198.
Two members, chairwoman Courtney Watson, an Ellicott City Democrat, and Republican Greg Fox both said at a Monday night council meeting that they oppose the $500 increase for council members. Fox asked if council pay shouldn't be reduced, since members have donated their pay raises to charity in each of the past two years during the recession.
"Should we be taking our salary back to where it was two years ago?" he asked. Fox said he was also concerned that the proposed executive pay raise is too high. Calvin Ball, an east Columbia Democrat, urged the council to remember that the rates set Monday night don't begin until December and last four years, but neither he nor the two other members said how they will vote.
Ulman was mostly upbeat in his speech to the county's business community, pointing out that Howard faces a bright future and still has the lowest unemployment rate in Maryland.
As he often does, he praised the quality of life in Howard, which has a low crime rate, top-rated schools, libraries and parks. Construction will soon get under way for a big new Ellicott City library, and on the first phase of Blandair Park in Columbia, while work is well under way on the North Laurel Community Center and park and the Robinson Nature Center.
Ulman also praised Howard's low-cost health access program for the uninsured.
"The Howard County school system is a driver of our economy and its strength is critical to our success," he said, making no mention of the maintenance of effort issue in the speech. He did talk about the tough economy, listing a series of cost cuts he's made to meet the problem.
But he placed even that in a positive context, noting increased efficiencies in joint county/school board purchasing, and then moving on to the thousands of high-paying federal jobs coming to the Fort Meade area.
If the national cyber security center also comes to the Fort Meade area as expected, "This puts Howard County at the epicenter of our nation's most important global security operation, one that will see the creation of up to 30,000 new private sector jobs."
He also looked forward to the approval of rezoning for downtown Columbia, opening the door on a 30-year redevelopment expected to bring thousand of new homes, stores and offices to town center. The County Council's vote Monday night, he said, "will be one of the most significant votes in Howard County history.
The speech ended with another positive point, about how the county helped solve a 30-year-old community problem on a private section of Henryton Road near Marriottsville as the result of a complaint residents brought to Ulman's annual town hall meeting last summer. In three months, despite a complex set of legal and financial problems that had left the road in bad shape for decades, the road was paved.
"The lesson here is that reasonable citizens and motivated public servants can solve any problem," Ulman quoted from a thank-you note he received from a resident.
"I truly believe that, and together we're doing it everyday," he said.