By BARBARA GREEN, editor@bowienewsonline.com

The battle over trying to increase county “secretarial staff” pay appeared to be over as the Montague County Commissioner’s adopted the 2021 budget without increasing those five positions, but it moved to a different front as one supervisor asked to have his assistant’s appointment rescinded.
Tensions rose Monday morning as Veteran’s Service Officer Colm Murphy made the request to a less than receptive court. Several years ago the court provided five reduced rate secretarial staff positions in lieu of funding a full-time person. In some instances the office part-time person moved up to this position.
During this year’s budget process several officials asked the position be moved up by $18,200 to be a full deputy due to expanded responsibilities. Tax Assessor Kathy Phillips and Murphy both made pitches in their budgets requests, and they were backed by County Clerk Glenda Henson and District Clerk Lesia Darden, who also have similar jobs in their offices. All of them indicated the jobs have evolved to involve much more than their original description.
In the VSO office, last fall Murphy asked to send this office assistant to training that would allow her to become certified and to work as his assistant accessing veteran records and working with the Veterans’ Administration. He asked the court to rescind her appointment as assistance VSO if she was not going to be compensated accordingly.

Read the full story in the mid-week Bowie News.