The Wicomico County Council’s collective bargaining agreement with the sheriff’s office reached a new impasse, putting pressure on an already tight deadline, after a contentious meeting Tuesday morning.
During the meeting, the current draft agreement was unanimously rejected after council members expressed doubts that the pension would remain solvent at the proposed cost of living adjustment rate of 2.5% for retirees. The proposed agreement also included a revised pay scale for deputies and other measures to keep the financial package competitive for current and future sheriff’s office employees.
According to the Office of the County Executive and Pam Oland, the county’s director of finance, CBIZ, the county firm hired to ensure the data and projections are financially viable, found the proposed agreement sound.
“We have had meetings about this and the reservation I have in talking to other council members is that we have not been given the information we need to make a decision on any part of this agreement. I would say we should say no to this until we get that,” said District 5 Councilman Joe Holloway.
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Wicomico County Director: ‘We have confidence in the CBA’
During the session, councilors noted that they were unaware that the projections they received in an email sent by the district administration on May 13 had been investigated and approved by CBIZ. In that email, the district administration argued: “after analyzing actuarial data from CBIZ, we are confident in what is proposed for the 2025 CBA. Based on current estimates, it appears that the collections for the contract period are sufficient to support this estimate to cover.”
The email also stated that 1% collections will help offset continued growth in retirement benefits. The conditions included adjustments to the salary scale after two years, which will affect deposits but have a limited impact on payments.
“In this scenario, these will be determined on the basis of current salaries. This was based on a sample of retirees and their actual actuarial calculations. This assumes that all twenty will retire after July 1, 2024 in fiscal year 2025. As with any estimate, if the factors change, the estimate will change,” the email said.
Wicomico County Executive Julie Giordano, in a statement released Tuesday after the vote, called the council’s decision one detrimental to law enforcement.
“It’s very frustrating to see this happen. We need this contract, especially the COLA, to attract and retain our deputies. All other parties agreed to the contract, and it is a shame that the Council could not support our law enforcement,” Giordano said.
John Cannon, chairman of the Wicomico County Council, added that much of the pressure on the agreement was due to a lack of time to approve the deal due to the delay in receiving it from the Office of the County Executive.
“The real origin of this is the fact that the process was postponed from the beginning. If you don’t think the process has been delayed, ask yourself why this council had to schedule a closed session at 8:30 this morning to try to evaluate the data and the concerns about it. That’s how close the deadline was for this council,” Cannon said.
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Bob Benson, the attorney tapped to represent the County Council in collective bargaining agreement discussions, explained that if an agreement is not reached by Feb. 1, the FOP or the county council could declare an impasse. The provincial government was tasked with providing the provincial council with a completed cost-benefit analysis by April 1, which did not happen. An agreement must be approved by the council before May 1, with the option to extend the deadline if that is not possible. In this case, such an extension was used.
“The reality is that the county council did not provide the council with a proposed CBA on April 1, nor did it give its office the status for the negotiations or their likely conclusion. The district administration has sent a draft copy of the CBA to the municipal council. The first council meeting was held on April 30, but it was not yet complete,” Benson said.
What follows is a meeting in the coming week with Fraternal Order of Police attorney Cheryl Brown, Benson and the Office of County Executive to reaffirm that such pension projections are affordable to the county.
District 3 Councilor Shane Baker reiterated his opposition to the agreement, saying it was still unclear the province could afford the proposal, amid continued testimony from Oland that the estimates had been reviewed and approved by CBIZ.
“I, along with the other members of this council, requested that an actuary be done by CBIZ because (Oland) is not,” Baker said. “It has been added to that request that, I understand, we have thirty deputies who can retire at this time. It should be easy to get an actuary to see if what we are proposing is sustainable or not. Even if the Finance Director says the email is from CBIZ, it is nowhere except in the explanatory notes.”
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FOP ‘extremely disappointed’ in provincial council vote
Scott M. Hamilton, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, released a statement Wednesday following the county council’s vote to reject the collective bargaining agreement.
“The FOP is extremely disappointed with the Wicomico County Council’s decision to unanimously reject the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) for fiscal years 2025 through 2026. This is the first time a County Council has rejected a CBA since voters overwhelmingly approved collective bargaining with binding arbitration. 2006. Furthermore, it is deeply troubling that even those who previously enjoyed the benefits of these types of agreements can no longer vote in support of those they left behind to hold the line,” Hamilton said in a statement.
According to Hamilton, the proposed agreement was the result of a “joint bargaining process involving the county executive, the sheriff and the FOP collective bargaining committee.”
Hamilton noted that the new agreement had been ratified by an overwhelming majority of FOP members.
“It would address concerns about pay pressures, and crucially would provide a new cost-of-living adjustment for officers who retired after July 1, 2024,” the statement said. “This provision would have allowed Wicomico sheriff’s deputies to join the vast majority of law enforcement agencies in Maryland that provide a COLA to retirees, including the Salisbury City Police Department, the Fruitland Police Department and the Sheriff’s Office of the counties of Somerset, Dorchester and Worcester.”
Hamilton added that the charter states the next step is arbitration. The FOP negotiating committee has instructed the organization’s legal team to prepare the necessary paperwork to initiate the standoff procedure.
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Behind the collective labor agreement figures
Oland reiterated that individual actuaries would not have direct contact with provincial officials, even if names and other personal information were redacted, as that would create a legally tenuous situation for the province itself. She further noted that the projections were calculated based on data approved by the CBIZ.
The estimates Brown and Oland presented at Tuesday’s meeting totaled:
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Sworn Officer Salary worth, in FY 2025, $7.761457, with an additional pension contribution of $77,615;
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in fiscal year 2026 this amounts to $7,955,493 and additional pension contributions of $79,555;
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in fiscal year 2027 this will be $8,154,380, and $81,544 in additional pension contributions;
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in fiscal year 2028 this will be $8,358,240 with additional pension contributions of $83,582;
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In FY 2029, salaries will be $8,567,196 and $85,672 in additional pension contributions;
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in fiscal year 2030, salaries will be $8,781,367, with $87,814 in additional pension contributions;
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in FY 2031, salaries will be $9,000,910, with $90,009 in additional pension contributions;
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in FY 2032, salaries will be $9,225,933, with additional pension contributions of $92,259;
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in fiscal year 2033, salaries will be $9,456,581 and $94,566 in additional pension contributions; and in
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In fiscal year 2034, salaries will be $9,692,996, with $96,930 in additional pension contributions.
Over a ten-year period, estimated pension contributions will total $869,456, with an additional liability of $772,000 and a difference of $97,546 between the two amounts.
A new collective labor agreement must be approved by law and introduced by July 1, 2024.
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This article originally appeared in the Salisbury Daily Times: Sparks fly over sheriff’s collective bargaining agreement
