Robert Fellner: Salaries can be shocking, but it’s the cities that provide them
Re “Don’t trust figures you get from Transparent California” (Online, March 23): Many Californians are genuinely shocked when they use TransparentCalifornia.com to discover how high public employee compensation is. For example, a recent letter writer was so flabbergasted after learning that the pay and benefits for a rookie Atwater police officer totaled $117,000, he suggested the data must be incorrect.
In fact, that figure comes straight from the City of Atwater and reflects one of the most widely reported findings of Transparent California’s data: that the compensation packages for California public workers can be double, triple or even quadruple the posted salary schedule amount when including overtime, specialty pay and the tremendous cost of retirement benefits.
As the state’s largest database of comprehensive and accurate public pay data, TransparentCalifornia.com has empowered residents, the media, and even elected officials with a better understanding of employee compensation – which is almost always the single largest component of a government’s budget.
All those interested in exploring the numbers further are encouraged to do so via the searchable and downloadable database at TransparentCalifornia.com.
Robert Fellner, research director, Transparent California, Las Vegas, Nev.
This story was originally published March 27, 2017 at 11:58 AM with the headline "Robert Fellner: Salaries can be shocking, but it’s the cities that provide them."