Salaries

Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer's effort to boost future mayors' and aldermen's salaries was roundly defeated after city officials realized that it would actually cut council members' pay -- and was illegal. Council members unanimously rejected Monday night a 3 percent cost of living adjustment in their paychecks, after realizing they would have to take a pay cut first. The bill would have also applied to themselves retroactively to July 1, though state law allows the council to change the salaries only of their successors.

Baltimore County and the union representing its police officers have reached tentative agreement on a four-year contract that would pump at least $20 million into officers' salaries -- which ranked last in a regional survey of starting pay last year.The proposal, which will be voted on by police union membership Tuesday night, is one of the most generous in county labor history. Effective July 1, the proposed contract would give all officers a $3,500 raise -- an average raise of 9 percent -- to make their salaries more competitive, county and union officials said.

TWO THINGS are fundamentally wrong with the massive $792 billion tax cut that GOP leaders have rammed through Congress.This is absolutely the wrong time to reduce our national revenues. And this particular proposal would be the worst and least economically productive kind of tax cut.So big and costly a slash in taxes right now would wreck the debt reduction plan we've finally gotten on track after so many false starts. It might raise interest rates. And it would give the glutton's share of the money that it siphons from the Treasury to people who need it the least.

Double-digit-percentage raises are nearly unheard of for area police officers, but a seller's market for their services has prompted Howard County's police union to reject an average first-year increase of 15 percent.Both sides said yesterday that negotiations are at an impasse and asked for an arbitrator.The breakdown comes as the department is looking to recruit 13 officers from other jurisdictions. But without an approved higher pay scale, Police Department officials have postponed advertising for the positions and put off their plans to put nine officers in area high schools.

IT'S EASY to generate outrage about salaries of corporate executives escalating beyond reason. It's harder to arouse the public about absurdities at the other end of the executive salary spectrum. Who cares if a political leader is underpaid?That's the dilemma in places like Harford County, where a proposal has limped along for months to increase the salary of the executive from $65,000 to $91,000.The status quo there is ludicrous -- as it was in Baltimore before the mayor won a raise last year.

The Sun recently asked metropolitan government leaders to write about their goals for 1998. Here are the plans of Carroll County's commissioners: CARROLL'S greatest challenge is to build on our growth management efforts, so that our rural county can grow with grace.Greater funding for agricultural land preservation is a must if Carroll is to keep its farms. We must maintain our efforts to place 100,000 acres under permanent easements.We must continue our aggressive effort to attract and gain other clean industry that pays a living wage and gives our skilled work force greater opportunities closer to their homes.

It's a sport that boasts the most recognizable figure in sports, Michael Jordan. It's a league that's been a model of how to do business, having never lost a regular-season game to a work stoppage. Yet after a season when owners paid out $1 billion in compensation to players, the National Basketball Association is saying enough is enough.Commissioner David Stern announced yesterday what has been rumored for months: The NBA will lock out its players beginning at midnight tonight. The move puts on hold free-agent signings, which were to begin tomorrow.

The explanation is so simple, few people give it a second thought: Big-league teams such as the Orioles are payingmillions more for their players, and must, therefore, charge millions more for tickets.Not so fast. Economists who study sports say the linkage between ticket prices and player salaries is one of the most misunderstood elements of the game, up there with the infield fly rule.Most fans have it backward: Increased ticket prices probably drive up salaries more than increased salaries drive up ticket prices, say experts.

BioReliance Corp. has raised the pay of 80 percent of its U.S. employees under a salary-adjustment plan started a year ago to bolster the biotechnology company's recruiting and retention efforts.The Rockville company, which earned $2.3 million on $25 million VTC in sales in the first half of this year, began the program because of increasing pressures from high-technology recruiting firms and competitors looking to entice key employees to jobs with higher salaries, said the company's president and chief executive officer, Capers McDonald.

Hampstead Town Council voted unanimously Tuesday night to raise the salaries of future mayors and council members, to take effect after next year's election.The mayor's salary will increase to $4,800 from $1,000 a year, and council members' pay will increase from $500 to $2,400.No one spoke at a public hearing on the proposal before the vote.The current town salaries are in the lower range for Maryland municipalities, said Town Manager Neil Ridgely, who introduced the proposed pay raises.

About 70,000 state employees would see their salaries reduced under a furlough proposal from Gov. Martin O'Malley to save $75 million in the middle of the latest budget crisis. The plan includes a shutdown of routine state government operations for five days around holidays, including the Friday before the coming Labor Day weekend. The highest paid employees - those earning more than $100,000 a year - would lose two weeks' pay. Lowest-paid workers would be docked for three days. Salaries would return to current levels next year.

Black & Decker Corp.'s first-quarter profit plunged 93 percent as a weak economy hurt sales of its power tools and other products much worse than it had anticipated. Executives at the Towson-based company don't believe the economy will improve any time soon, saying they expect sales to decline just as much in the second quarter as the first three months of the year. The company also lowered its outlook for the year. The company on Thursday reported earnings for the quarter that ended March 29 of $4.9 million, or 8 cents per diluted share.

Power tool maker Black & Decker Corp. is cutting salaries and suspending 401(k) matches for U.S. employees in response to the global recession and declining revenues, the company said yesterday. Starting with the first pay period in April, the Towson company said base salaries of top executives will be cut by 10 percent, salaried employees by 5 percent, and salaried workers who qualify for overtime by 2.5 percent. Black & Decker Chief Executive Officer Nolan D. Archibald, who made $11.1 million in total compensation in 2007, will likely take a $150,000 cut from his $1.5 million base salary.

At a time when state workers are being furloughed and face possible layoffs, Maryland judges would get a pay raise of nearly $40,000 over the next four years under a plan hatched by an influential commission that recommends salaries for those on the bench. The Judicial Compensation Commission, which includes a lawyer, a developer and business leaders, plans to submit its recommendation to the General Assembly next month, according to Chairwoman Betty Buck, a businesswoman who chairs the state chamber of commerce.

The Senate gave preliminary approval yesterday to nearly $390 million in cuts from Gov. Martin O'Malley's proposed budget for next year, turning aside Republican efforts to make even deeper reductions and to limit raises for top administration officials. Sen. David R. Brinkley, the GOP leader from Frederick and Carroll counties, urged senators to lop $100 million more from O'Malley's spending plan and to use $114 million from state reserve funds to allow for repeal of the computer services tax. "This was a bad idea from the start," Brinkley said of the computer-services tax, part of a package of tax increases meant to ease the state's structural budget deficit.

The budget cuts in the General Assembly in the past year have had a long reach, with hundreds of millions in reductions to planned state spending on everything from education to public libraries. One area where the ax didn't fall? The salaries of legislators, which range from $43,500 a year to $56,500, for a 90-day session. Annapolis lawmakers had good reason for not cutting their salaries during the special legislative session in November, when they raised taxes by $1.3 billion. It's against the law. But Sen. Bryan W. Simonaire, an Anne Arundel County Republican, believes the system for determining legislators' pay - which was designed to largely remove the politically tricky decision from legislators' hands - is due for a change.

The president of the Johns Hopkins University received nearly $2 million in pay and benefits in the 2006 fiscal year, making him the third-best-compensated college president in the country, according to an annual survey published today by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Dr. William R. Brody's compensation more than doubled since 2005 -- in large part because of a $920,000 check for deferred salaries dating to 1998, Hopkins officials said. The survey's private-college data are based on tax returns covering July 2005 through June 2006, the most recent available for private universities.

For nearly a dozen years, baseball agent Scott Boras and Orioles principal owner Peter Angelos ignored each other as much as possible. Oh, they'll say on the record it was nothing personal. As Boras once quipped, they are both attorneys and both of Greek heritage, so how could they not have a mutual respect? They're just a pair of busy, hardworking stiffs who simply never found the time to break pita together. At least until last week - when the club and Boras consummated two deals in the time it normally takes the Orioles and New York Yankees to play a game.

Annapolis Mayor Ellen O. Moyer's effort to boost future mayors' and aldermen's salaries was roundly defeated after city officials realized that it would actually cut council members' pay -- and was illegal. Council members unanimously rejected Monday night a 3 percent cost of living adjustment in their paychecks, after realizing they would have to take a pay cut first. The bill would have also applied to themselves retroactively to July 1, though state law allows the council to change the salaries only of their successors.

About 2,100 state employees will each take home $125,000 or more in salary this year, with nearly all of the top earners working for the University System of Maryland. The men's basketball coach, athletic director and football coach at the University of Maryland, College Park all rank high on the list, but the top spots for base pay all go to researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Men's basketball coach Gary Williams earns about $1.6 million a year, which includes radio and TV appearances, sponsorship deals, bonuses and incentives; and football coach Ralph Friedgen was last reported to be guaranteed at least $1.5 million.