Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this session of government operations and fiscal policy.

Today we have two items, but they're very related on our agenda.

First is a review of a compensation and benefits for all agencies, and then a review of the collective bargaining agreements.

We are joined today by the council president, Councilmember Natalie Fanny Gonzalez, and our Vice President, Councilmember Balcom.

Thank you for joining the committee today.

The committee today will be reviewing, as I said, compensation and benefits.

We will not be taking any votes today.

There are many things to consider as we look at this.

I want to thank our central staff for their work on this.

And I also want to take a moment to thank all of our unions.

Many folks who are represented here today for your work.

We know the process of collective bargaining is one that takes many months and is one that you participate in with our Office of Labor Relations, who is also represented today.

And so we just want to express first our thanks for doing that work as we, as the council now takes on the reviewing of the collective bargaining agreements and compensation and benefits.

The full council will also be reviewing this next Tuesday.

And again, I just want to thank everyone who is here today.

And I will now turn it over to our council staff, Mr.

Howard.

Terrific.

Good afternoon, everyone.

And today Mr.

Trump and I will walk through a summary of the compensation and benefits for all agencies as proposed in the county executives recommended FY27 budget.

Our focus as we do each year is going to be primarily on county government because those are the items that the council has final decision authority over, although we are going to share as much information as we can about some of the other agencies as well, with the understanding that the final decisions on those on pay and benefits for those agencies are made by their respective governing bodies.

So we're going to walk through the staff report.

We'll try to do our best to summarize things and not go through every single piece.

But it does take a little bit longer to go through this presentation than most budgets just because it is very complex.

There's a lot of different pieces, and it's such a significant part of the budget, and it's important to go through and make sure everyone hears all the different details and as you have to embark on decisions on these issues going forward.

So to begin with, um on page two, we have a summary of FY27 recommended compensation costs across across the agencies.

And the FY27 recommended budget includes about $4.9 billion in compensation costs, which is a 4.5% increase over FY26 cumulatively.

Those are that's the high-level numbers we're we're going to be talking about.

And you can see the table one breaks down the increases by agency.

Thank you, Mr.

Howard.

Good afternoon, Council members.

Walking through them again in a bit of detail.

For the fraternal order of police and police leadership service, FOP, and the PLS, the executive recommends a general wage adjustment of 3% and a five 3.5% service increment for those not atop of grade for a total maximum of 6.5% increase.

For the IAFF and fire and rescue, the executive recommends a 2.5% GWA general wage adjustment and a service increment, also 3.5% for a total maximum of 6% for those not atop of grade.

For McGeo, we're going to divide up everybody other than the deputy sheriffs and the correctional officers.

The executive recommends a 2 and 0.85% general wage adjustment along with a 3.5% service increment for a maximum total of 6.35%.

The McGeeO agreement also includes two separate salary schedule adjustments.

In essence, taking the salary schedule and raising them up an increment.

For the deputy sheriffs, that salary schedule adjustment, depending on the position and years of service can range between about 1.6% to a little over 4%.

So again, total for an employee not at top of grade, between a little under 8% to about 10.5%.

For correctional officers, the salary schedule adjustment is a uniform 1.57% for all for most all on this on the schedule, meaning a total maximum for those not atop of grade of 7.92%, and then for non-represented 6.35%, the general wage adjustment and the service increment.

Of note, federal employees will receive a 1% COLA or GWA this year and a 1.5% increment, and state of Maryland employees will receive a 1.5% to 2% COLA general wage adjustment and a 2.5% increment.

Continuing on page 4, our memo includes a comparison of general wage adjustments and inflation over the past decade.

And what we found is that the general wage adjustments awarded to county government employees have exceeded the rate of inflation over the past decade, decade.

From FY16 to FY26, the compounded rate of GWAs for the FOP, IAFF, and McGeo have ranged between 37.5% to near 40%.

Over that same decade, the CPI is increased by compounded rate of 31%.

Moving on to page 5.

So, as mentioned previously, the executive recommends salary schedule adjustments.

The first is for deputy sheriffs within the McGeo agreement, and as mentioned that would raise the salary schedule for all employees between about 1.6% and a little over 4%.

All of these are exclusive of the GWAs and the increments.

Those would be over and above.

And OMB estimates the cost for this at about 238,000 in FY27.

And you'll see we included, for all of these, we've included the OLR's justification given to us for these.

And here the for this salary schedule adjustment, the major point are to attract recruits and to address pay compression.

Similarly, the executive recommends a salary schedule adjustment of 1.57% for correctional officers.

OMB estimates this at about $500,000 in FY27.

For we'll skip a few things and move on to page six to discuss longevity increments.

Just a definition, certain county government employees who have worked for a specific specified number of years.