Salary parity sought in deeds office

MACHIAS – The register of probate for Washington County has gone to bat for herself and her department’s probate deputy for getting paid on the same wage scale as those who work similar positions in the county’s deeds office.

Carlene Holmes, in her sixth year as the register of probate, made her pitch to budget advisory committee members on Monday. They spent the day meeting with department heads one by one in their first meeting of the budgeting season.

Bringing the top two probate-office salaries on par with the top two deeds-office salaries in 2005 would add just $2,204 to the probate department’s budget, Holmes told the committee.

“The deputy in the probate office isn’t even paid [on a relative hourly wage] what the clerk-secretary in the deeds office earns,” she said.

The nine-member committee must review the tentative county budget and make its recommendations to the three commissioners before Nov. 15.

The requests by department heads, from emergency management to district attorney to deeds to sheriff and jail, were routine – until the agenda turned to the probate department requests.

The salaries for the four people who staff the probate office, including the 20-hours-a-week judge, add up to $89,210. The salaries for the four who work in the deeds office, Holmes pointed out, add up to $112,675.

Given the level of responsibilities within the probate office, there should be a slight adjustment for the register’s and the deputy’s paychecks, Holmes advocated.

“In the majority of Maine’s 16 counties, the deeds and probate employees are paid on the same wage scale,” she said. “We’re not trying to get paid what they are paid in Cumberland County. We just want parity with the deeds office here.

“It’s not right that my probate deputy is considered less valuable than the clerk-secretary in the deeds office.”

An entry-level probate deputy earns $11.89 per hour, for 2004 figures. An entry-level clerk-secretary for deeds earns $11.95. An entry-level deeds deputy earns $12.78.

But Holmes’ argument didn’t sit well with Joyce Thompson, the county clerk who attended the meeting in a note-taking capacity. Changing what the two nonunion employees earn in the probate office could trigger an expensive, time-consuming wage-scale study of all county positions, Thompson said.

“I think all of the jobs would need to be looked at in fairness to everybody,” Thompson told the committee members. “If you review salaries for one, you should make it a complete study, and that’s very expensive.”

Just two years ago, the advisory committee approved, and the commissioners granted, $12,000 increases to both Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts and his deputy.

Across-the-board studies of wages of county employees were last conducted in 1997 and 1993, Thompson said.

It’s the job of the advisory committee members to review all the numbers within the county’s proposed $5.2 million working budget.

They come together again next Monday for more work. They will look at the budget requests for the county’s airports, the Washington County Extension Association, the Washington County Firefighter Association and the Downeast Institute for Marine Research and Education.

They also will hear a joint presentation from other groups that seek funding from the county, including the Eastern Maine Development Corp., the Washington County Council of Governments, the Washington County Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Downeast Resource Conservation and Development Council.

Then come their deliberations in the afternoon, followed by their recommendations to the commissioners.