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California State Salaries

32 points| marcamillion | 15 years ago |sacbee.com | reply

45 comments

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[+] kennethn|15 years ago|reply
I see a seven-figure salary next to the name of a surgeon who's saved my child's life on three occasions. Yeah, that's about right.
[+] TomOfTTB|15 years ago|reply
Well I'm happy your child is healthy but your attitude is exactly the problem. The question isn't what your child's life is worth the question is could that doctor have done the same thing for less money. Because if we could've paid him $500,000 instead of $1 million we'd have $500,000 more dollars to save the other children's lives. Don't get me wrong, if the doctor can make 1 million elsewhere then we should pay him 1 million. But if he can't we shouldn't pay him 1 million simply because government officials don't mind spending other People's Money.
[+] elliottcarlson|15 years ago|reply
I seriously apologize - I mis-clicked and accidentally voted this down... Any surgeon who has the power and does save any child's life deserves a good salary - they are miracle workers on so many levels.
[+] jonhendry|15 years ago|reply
The basic problem is people stupidly think that a "state employee" is always someone like the clerks at the DMV, when in actual fact, it includes public university medical school professors and similar high-skilled people, the hiring of whom requires high salaries due to competition with other hiring institutions. If you want to pay a professor of cardiovascular surgery as if he were a DMV clerk, you're not going to get a professor worth hiring.

It also includes high-skilled people being asked to work in unusually unsafe or unpleasant situations, for example prison psychiatrists.

[+] sudonim|15 years ago|reply
Whoa. A college football coach is the highest paid california state employee? Seems like california is focused on the wrong things.
[+] tedunangst|15 years ago|reply
Winning football teams fill stadiums (selling tickets), get better ESPN coverage (more money) and keep alums happy (bigger donations). That position probably turns a profit when it's all accounted for.
[+] drinian|15 years ago|reply
The justification is generally that these football programs pay for themselves with ticket sales, merchandising, and segregated fundraising. I know that at my private alma mater (Duke), Coach K makes many times the salary of President Brodhead and it's still a net positive income for the school.

Whether that's a business that universities should be in is a question for another day.

[+] rdouble|15 years ago|reply
This is the case in almost every state.
[+] danilocampos|15 years ago|reply
How about this: general manager/CEO of San Mateo country's transportation department makes $400,000:

http://www.samtrans.com/pdf/Executive_Compensation.pdf

Does the market really require that wage to keep the buses running on time? Are the skills necessary that rare? He makes more than the President of the United States.

[+] tzs|15 years ago|reply
The President also gets $400k, and after he leaves office gets a $200k pension, plus a bunch of other benefits, so overall is doing quite a bit better than the bus guy.
[+] bugsy|15 years ago|reply
Hm, getting down to page 2500 of results, we see that civil engineer salaries are going down each year.
[+] fungobat|15 years ago|reply
I have heard that these top salaries get skewed because state employees tend to get a lot of "back end" compensation. So if it's your last year of employment, you collect unused vacation and sick pay. They also put in as much overtime as possible because it forces a higher pension due to averaging of the last few years of pay to determine pension amounts. So you will see a guy who maybe made 70k getting 100k+ during his last one or two years.
[+] marcamillion|15 years ago|reply
What's obsurd is the increase from 2009 to 2010.

Great recession? California bankrupt ? Someone never got the memo, it seems.

[+] tedkimble|15 years ago|reply
That's the problem with raw data like this. It's easy for you to look at a couple pages, find some examples, and make a blanket statement like that.

Start at the last page (with the default still >$100k) and go through a few hundred pages. You'll see that the majority have taken ~10% pay cuts from 2008 to 2010.

I'm not saying that CA "did get the memo", but your tone seems unnecessary, at least based on the data you linked to.

[+] rdtsc|15 years ago|reply
> California bankrupt ?

Well at least now we know why ;-)

[+] abhikshah|15 years ago|reply
The table needs context. How much could the same person make in private industry for a similar job?
[+] JSig|15 years ago|reply
These people are supposed to be public servants. You would expect a special kind of person willing to make sacrifices for the greater good to take these jobs.

I would expect that pay and benefits should be pegged to the private sector. In some cases they could make more and some cases they could make less. But overall it should come close to private sector pay.

Average Compensation (2009)

Federal (123,049) State & Local (69,913) Private (61,051)

http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/income/2010-08-10-1Afe...

I'm not a big fan of public unions. It seems like there is nobody at the bargaining table on the side of the tax payer. Also, if people don't like the benefits that come with serving the public, they should not take the job. Like I said, it should take a special kind of person.

Here is a nice article on public unions

The Beholden State How public-sector unions broke California http://city-journal.org/2010/20_2_california-unions.html

[+] a5seo|15 years ago|reply
True, but you could also ask how much value they or their dept. add. What's their NPV as an employee?
[+] polymath21|15 years ago|reply
The reason why coaches like Tedford and Howland get paid so much is because the amount of revenue they bring in for their schools is worth much, much more. It's the same reason Fortune 500 CEO's get paid millions because the value a good CEO can create for their company is often worth hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars. So paying their CEO just a few million is a relative bargain. Same concept with D1 football and bball coaches.
[+] alsomike|15 years ago|reply
A lot of these salaries are in the Corrections department. The US didn't get to be the world's #1 jailer for free, guys!
[+] drinian|15 years ago|reply
While I agree that the US has a serious imprisonment problem (jailing people for the wrong reasons), I have to believe that getting doctors to work in the prison system requires some significant financial incentives -- and most of these people seem to be medical professionals.
[+] TomOfTTB|15 years ago|reply
The average cost per inmate in California is about $49,000, twice the cost to run prisons in other states (the average is around $28,000). Some states are even less. The average cost per inmate in Florida is under $20,000. Texas is a little over $15,000.
[+] alsomike|15 years ago|reply
Actual data: "even after accounting for the value of retirement, healthcare, and other benefits, state and local employees earn less than private sector counterparts. On average, total compensation is 6.8% lower for state employees and 7.4% lower for local employees than for comparable private sector employees"

The state of California pays 9.8% less for similar jobs, in line with the national average of 11.4% less.

http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=...

[+] rick888|15 years ago|reply
The lowest salary on the last page is $103,000

It's no surprise that the state is bankrupt

[+] amock|15 years ago|reply
That's because by default it only shows salaries over $100,000.
[+] burgerbrain|15 years ago|reply
Somehow I find it hard to get bent out of shape about "SENIOR BRIDGE ENGINEER" making 103,000/yr. That's hardly buckets of cash, particularly in CA. There are plenty of much more absurd salaries listed right there for you to call out...