History
CAMRO was founded in 1961 because eleven clerks could not get a straight answer about how long to keep tax rolls.
1961
Clearwater had no retention schedule at all. Every municipality decided for itself how long to keep a tax roll, and every municipality decided differently.
Eleven clerks met in a room above a hardware store in Fairholm in March 1961 to compare minute books and work out what they were each doing. They produced a four-page summary of common practice, mimeographed it, and mailed it to every municipality in the state. Roughly a third wrote back asking who they were.
Margaret Halloran, Fairholm city clerk from 1958 to 1984, chaired that meeting, was elected the association’s first president, and served three terms. The Halloran Award is named for her.
The intervening sixty-five years
1963 — the first annual conference
Held every spring since. The 1968 addition of a two-day training school at Fairholm State is the direct ancestor of the summer Institute, and the beginning of the relationship with the Institute of Local Government that still delivers the CCRO.
1974 — the state schedule
Clearwater adopted its first General Retention Schedule. CAMRO wrote the draft it was based on — thirteen years of comparing practice turned into the document the State Archives issued under its own name.
1976 — districts
Membership passed 150 and the association stopped being a Fairholm organisation. Twelve districts were drawn along county lines and each got a director. The structure has not changed since.
1989 — the CCRO
Certification launched with 60 education points across four domains. The first cohort was nineteen clerks. Certification was voluntary and stayed voluntary for fifteen years.
2004 — Chapter 44
The Municipal Records Retention Act required every municipality to appoint a certified records officer. Overnight, a voluntary credential became the qualification for a statutory post, and CAMRO went from a professional society to part of the state’s compliance architecture.
2011 — the fiftieth
Membership 289. The association commissioned an oral history; the recordings are in the member library and several of the clerks interviewed had been in post since the 1960s.
2027 — electronic records
The revised schedule and HB 1149 put the association back where it started: a new rule, no funding, and 214 municipalities that need somebody to explain what it means in practice.
Past presidents
Thirty-one presidents since 1961.
Margaret Halloran (1961–1964) · Wilbur Teague (1964–1966) · Constance Ruiz (1966–1970) · Arthur Delacroix (1970–1972) · Vera Mbeki (1972–1976) · Harold Stanek (1976–1980) · Josephine Arceneaux (1980–1986) · Raymond Oduya (1986–1990) · Patricia Lindqvist (1990–1996) · Douglas Fairweather (1996–2000) · Miriam Sowande (2000–2006) · Terrence Vasquez (2006–2012) · Eleanor Pryce (2012–2018) · Gordon Achebe (2018–2024) · Harriet Nowicki (2024–2026) · Marguerite Oyelaran (2026– )
The full list with municipalities is in the member library.