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Electoral board member urges pay parity; registrar proposes separate board budget line
Summary
At the Sept. 8 Harrisonburg City Electoral Board meeting, a board member pressed to equalize election-day pay with precinct chiefs; the registrar recommended a separate budget line for board compensation, training and travel to remove conflicts of interest and streamline requests to the city.
Ramona Sanders, an electoral board member, urged the board to pursue pay parity with precinct chiefs, saying: "The lowest hanging fruit in my opinion is equalizing the election day pay for us with the pay of what the chiefs get, which is $300 a day." The board discussed asking the registrar to include the request in the city's next budget submission and encouraged outreach to state legislators to change statutory compensation if needed.
General Registrar Mark said he had forwarded Sanders's request into the department's budget submission but stressed he cannot unilaterally increase compensation because the General Assembly and the Department of Elections set the statutory compensation framework. Mark told the board he submitted the request "to be additionally sent with my budget" but cautioned that submission does not guarantee approval by the city or state. To reduce a perceived conflict — because the registrar both submits budget requests and answers to the board — Mark recommended creating a separate line item for electoral-board compensation, training and travel so the board could take responsibility for its requests through the city manager and city council.
Board members debated mechanics of that approach: whether the line should be an itemized subaccount inside the registrar's departmental submission or a discrete board-specific request that board members could present at budget hearings. The board signaled support for exploring a separate, itemized budget line so the board's travel and training expenses could be tracked from cycle to cycle and to make the request more visible to city decisionmakers.
