PRINCESS ANNE, Md. (AP) - Significant racial disparities persist in Somerset County government, the American Civil Liberties Union and the NAACP said in a report released Tuesday.

The report questions why a county that is 42 percent black doesn't have a single African American official in the upper levels of government.

It found that no African American has ever been elected or appointed to a top job in Somerset County government. The report also says African Americans who are hired by the county are disproportionately put in lower level, lower paying jobs.

“Somerset County's motto is ‘Semper Eadem,’ which is Latin for 'Always the Same.' And it's true - the sad legacy of Somerset's history of racial segregation and exclusion is all too evident in county government today,” Deborah Jeon, legal director for the ACLU of Maryland, said in a statement.

C. Samuel Boston, the interim county administrator, did not immediately return a phone call seeking comment.

The report also found that conditions appear to be getting worse. For example, the study found that not a single African American was employed by the county in a professional capacity in 2007. In 2005, the county employed one African American in a professional position.

The report also concluded that only one African American was hired by the county in 2007, just 6.7 percent of all the new hires for that year.

The report, which examined data in Equal Employment Opportunities filings by Somerset County government, found that the county spent more than $5.7 million on the salaries of white employees, while African Americans received $750,000.

Kirkland Hall, president of the Somerset County branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said in a statement that he is calling on the community to work together to bring down barriers created by the county's long history of discrimination.

“It's worse than I expected, and I'm just happy that now it's public and it's come to the forefront of the problems in our county,” Hall said in a telephone interview.