Having county-supplied instant-message cell phones has sped up constituent responses, but it has also made life tougher for Howard County Council members, several told a citizens committee considering salaries for elected officials.
"If I don't look at this before noon," Ellicott City Democrat Courtney Watson told the Compensation Commission members as she showed her BlackBerry, "I'll have 30 e-mails on it. That's a hard part of this job. You're getting hit from all sides." Watson also works full time at an insurance agency and has three children.
"This job will take from you as much as you will give it," she said.
Watson and her four colleagues are the first council members to have the text message devices, and all also have personal cell phones, which complicates their attempts to ration their time for what's supposed to be a part-time job. Chairwoman Mary Kay Sigaty, a west Columbia Democrat, testified Sept. 15, with the rest appearing last week.
None suggested making the job full time, but the time demands are growing, they said. They spend from 20 to 70 hours a week on the county job, depending on what issues are up for consideration. Council members now get $52,892 and Executive Ken Ulman gets $158,675, though all returned part of their pay this year in solidarity with unpaid furloughs assigned county employees. Elected officials are due for a nearly 1 percent pay raise in December. Whomever the members choose as chairman gets an added $1,000, an amount that all but Watson said was too low.
All said they don't do the job for the salary, but most felt the current pay level is adequate, with Republican Greg Fox and Watson saying it is "reasonable," if perhaps a tad high.
The commission is to recommend by mid-December changes to the pay levels for the County Council and the executive elected in November 2010. The next meeting is Oct. 29.
Jen Terrasa, a King's Contrivance Democrat, said past council members told her that a person who mailed a letter with a problem that required consultation with a county agency could typically expect a two-week wait to get a response, but people aren't that patient anymore.
"Frequently, I'm returning e-mails at 10 or 11 o'clock at night," she said. "The workload has definitely increased." Terrasa, a lawyer and mother of three children younger than 10, said there is "constant communication," including local blogs, list-serves and e-mails. Often, people sending those messages have their facts wrong, she said, and she must respond.
