County Personnel

The Anne Arundel County Personnel Board has rejected TC claim by more than 100 county union members that they deserve a 14.3 percent raise to compensate them for their workweek being increased from 35 to 40 hours.The board ruled 4-1 in favor of the Gary administration, which made the change last year as part of a package of personnel reforms.The employees, members of American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees Locals 582 and 2563, received lump sum bonuses last year of $400 and $600, respectively.

MONDAY The Anne Arundel County Council will meet at 7 p.m. to discuss a bill that would require shopping centers with 15 or more businesses to install outdoor surveillance equipment. Members will also discuss proposals that would alter pay grades and class titles for some county personnel and transfer education funds. Meetings are held in the council chambers in the Arundel Center, 44 Calvert St., Annapolis. WEDNESDAY The Annapolis City Council will hold a public hearing at 7 p.m. that will discuss whether the city should issue $15 million in bonds for public improvements and analyze rules regarding subdivision density.

Anne Arundel County officials and union representatives for the nearly 500 county firefighters and paramedics who are at an impasse in contract negotiations didn't receive the fact-finding report they were expecting yesterday. The report, which will include recommendations on how the labor dispute could be resolved, was expected Friday. But officials hadn't received the document, being done by an independent fact-finder hired by both sides, when they left their offices Tuesday. "I'm not sure what the holdup is," said county personnel director Randall Schultz.

Two Baltimore County employees charged last month with growing marijuana were suspended without pay yesterday by county administrative officer Merreen E. Kelly.The action was taken after a review of grand jury indictments handed down Monday against the couple, Mr. Kelly said.Those indictments charged Walter Patrick Kincer, 39, and his wife Jo Anne, 34, with possession of cocaine, hashish and speed.The couple already had been charged with manufacturing and possessing marijuana.The charges stem from a Sept.

Anne Arundel County Executive Janet S. Owens yesterday announced the appointment of directors of the county's land-use and personnel offices.The new acting director of the Department of Planning and Code Enforcement is Richard Wilcox, formerly the department's assistant.He replaces Steven Cover, who resigned this month to take a job with a development engineering firm.Wilcox has worked as a building inspector and engineer for the county for a decade. Before that, he worked as construction manager for a North Carolina-based building company and owned a development engineering firm.

Anne Arundel County is without an official police chief following Tuesday's formal retirement of Chief Larry Tolliver. This month Tolliver announced he was stepping down effective May 22, and County Executive Laura Neuman has not named a permanent or interim chief to replace him. Deputy Chief Pam Davis is handling day-to-day affairs for the department, said department spokesman Justin Mulcahy. Davis routinely fills in when the chief is traveling or on vacation. Though Tolliver's last official day was Tuesday, he has not been at police headquarters in Millersville since May 10, when a few dozen staffers threw him a farewell party, Mulcahy said.

The NAACP and other groups are working with Anne Arundel County on strategies to hire more minority firefighters. Anne Arundel County Fire Chief Roger C. Simonds Sr. and a county personnel manager will attend the county National Association for the Advancement of Colored People meeting tonight to discuss the hiring policies and the department's stepped-up plans to recruit more minorities. The meeting is at 8 p.m. in the local chapter's Annapolis office. The focus of their debate is a county personnel code - used in some form for decades - that gives preference to hiring volunteers.

More than a dozen angry county police officers have demanded that the results of a recent promotion examination be tossed out, claiming a lieutenant passed on test information to lower-ranking officers for a price.In an unsigned letter dated May 2, the officers charged that Lt. Ronald Bateman, who charges $100 for a course to help applicants prepare for the exams, pried advance information about the March 20 test from Joseph Yunkers, the county personnel administrator who wrote the questions.

More than 800 people have applied to fill two administrative vacancies in Howard County government and the crush of applicants hasn't surprised the county personnel office one bit.Getting more than 400 applications for a budget analyst opening and 393 from people seeking to become a County Council legislative assistant during a two-week period is merely a reflection of the economy, said P. William Herndon, assistant personnel administrator. "Quite often, in the past couple of years, people will have qualifications that exceed those needed for the job."

Chuck Ecker's appointment of Joanne Nelson as Howard County's new personnel director raises serious questions, once again, about the executive's vision of local government.Nelson, who took office May 1, will be responsible for running the county's personnel system -- including job classification, benefits programs and labor relations. So critical is the post that the county code specifies the person who holds it must have six years of "increasingly responsible experience in personnel management" as well as a "comprehensive knowledge of principles and practices of public personnel management."