Is this an episode of the Twilight Zone?

Jack, you're right, this should be done for all government agencies.

I did a quick analysis of just the first ten pages of Multnomah Co.s employee list. What are they running over at Multnomah Co.-a Hospital?

In just those pages there were over 84 health care personel; doctors, senior health care managers, dentist, psychiatrists; from $215,667 to $136,787. I stopped there not wanting to know how many are in health care in the remaining 200 plus pages. Will they all be laid off when ObamaCare takes over? I can't wait for my Multnomah Co. taxes to be reduced.

Another good analysis would be counting all the management positions and their total compensation and percentage of all employees.

I noted with interest that Multnomah County's cost for retirement benefits through PERS for its employees is about 21% of salary (with some variation). The same site has similar information for state employees. The state's retirement contributions are about 15% of salaries. Why the difference?

The mainstream media is afraid to bite the gubberment hands that fax them ready to read/print stories.

Then there is the newsies hope they might land one of those gubberment jobs spinning those ready to read/print stories for the mainstream media.

Journalism reduced to cut and paste.

Community Justice, IT head pulls in 165K!! Look at ALL of the people making more than 100K! We need some hope and change here!!

Lots of sheriff dept. people making the big bucks.

It't the insulated class.

Not quite as bad as that 32000 city near LA that was paying, what, $800k to the mayor... but this is pretty sickening.

Call me incredibly naive, but why do we need a county health department anyway? To send out alerts about swine flu and such?

Deep into the corrections officers at page 55 and still above 100k. Not seen yet-the social workers/benefits coordinators(and the teachers who are obviously in a different data base) who are the glue holding things together as the recession teeters on a double dip.

Oh man, I remember the flack that went on when the Stateman Journal in Salem listed the local teachers salaries a year or two ago.

"Thats personal information! Its not fair that everyone knows what I make!"

Big money in Human Resources! I'm sure they spend lots of taxpayer money to conduct salary analysis, comparing themselves to corporate counterparts. Seems lots of people in HR need more than 100k to do their jobs.

Not bad, 1103 people making > $100K/yr (for those of you who went to public schools that is > $110M/yr alone).

Cogen makes $180K and the other commissioners make $120K/yr - for basically doing nothing besides once a week meetings to vote and running their personal PR machines.

I still remember the stories of comms like Naito et al being hard pressed to account for more than 20 hours/week doing their jobs.

So, are there any more questions about whether our fiscal problems are spending-related or revenue-related? Anyone who claims we're going to get out of the current fiscal situation without a radical reduction in the number of people working for government at all levels is simply whistling past the graveyard. Imagine what a federal government listing would look like.

"Not bad, 1103 people making > $100K/yr (for those of you who went to public schools that is > $110M/yr alone)."
===

Yep, thousands of public employees make six digit Compensation (the unions HATE when you use the total compensation number instead of just the salary number). Maybe it is because their pay "other than salary" is so out of whack with reality.

PERS percent of total pay next year doubles from 5% to 10%. Who would have thunk it?

Remember, people enter "public service" because they care so much for their fellow humans. They have faced years and years of low pay. In return, they got the promise--I said promise--that at least in their sunset years, they wouldn't burden the rest of society with their poverty.

Don't you think these "servants" who provided "vital services" deserve a "family wage," or at least as "living wage?"

I guess I'm not opposed to releasing salaries of public employees, but I think it's kind of creepy that their full names are posted as well.

And if posting salaries and names of public employees is a good idea, should we also require that any firm pursuing/receiving a gov't contract must also publish the names and salaries of their employees?

Or how about private institutions of higher learning that each benefit from millions in gov't grants and subsidized loans channeled to them thru students?

The non-physician positions paying around $200k or higher seem way too rich comparing them to other government positions of similar demands. Chair Cogen seems only too happy to be paying these types of salaries and benefits. You even hear sometimes how these positions merit even higher compensation rates. The test should actually go the other way. Lower the compensation until you start seeing a higher turnover rate than typical for like government agencies.

Right now, I think the City of Portland list would be more interesting.

A few years ago the City Auditor released an Excel spreadsheet listing, in alphabetical order, the wages actually paisd to city employees.

I got it from a link Jack posted. Only semi surprisingly, the highest wage recipients were predominately PPB patrol officers, who had learned well how to play the court overtime game. Folks in the Bureau of Emergency Communications, also puling a lot of overtime, were also very high on the chart.

It would be interesting to see the City numbers for the 12 months ending June 30, 2010 and the 12 months ending June 30, 2009, the end dates for each of the last two fiscal years.

Total employment numbers, and total FTEs for each fiscal year would be interesting.

While there have been layoffs in , for example, fireman Randy's Bureau of Development Services (BDS), the City has also been doing a lot of hiring in other areas, in addition to Adams' staff.

I suspect that total FTEs for each fiscal year and total employees for each fiscal year is data that the City Council and the Mayor would NOT want to have out there is any readily readable form.

Hey if they want their names and jobs to be private they should go work in the private sector.

But gee, that would mean a big pay cut and later retirement.

STAFF ASSISTANT Madrigal Marissa D $1,025.06 $11,871.60 $20,835.12 $90,000.00 $123,731.78

STAFF ASSISTANT Ozanne Peter A
$163,746.58

I know 432 people who could do that job for $92,544.00 while at the same time doing this job too.

STAFF ASSISTANT Madrigal Marissa D
$123,731.78

And just imagine the amount of politicking to preserve this gravy train that goes on.

With essentially zero consequences for anything it's certain that self interest activism runs rampant throughout the county offices.

From the other outrage story:

"BELL, Calif. (AP) - Just days after firing three of the highest paid municipal employees in the United States, the mayor and other town leaders of this modest Los Angeles suburb could find their own jobs in jeopardy.

The City Council, which booted out its police chief, city manager and assistant city manager at an emergency meeting on Thursday, has called another such meeting for Monday to address the future of this 2-square-mile city southeast of Los Angeles.

And late Sunday, Attorney General Jerry Brown's office announced that he will hold a news conference to "disclose new developments in his probe of excessive salaries in the city of Bell."
===

I say shine the light on all of this public information, including their full names.

If they signed any Voter Initiative, publish their names! Concealed Handgun license? Publish their names! Voted or did not vote in an election? Publish!

The disinfectant is to shine the light on this outrage!!!

Or maybe it is not an outrage... maybe public servants are still not paid as much as they are worth!! After all, many of these jobs require a college degree. Like the HR MGR 2 or the Program Mgr 2.

Would the people who are against living/family wages for public employees please be so kind as to announce here the names of the businesses you own or work for? As a former public employee, I'd like to know which businesses don't appreciate my patronage.

My salary was just over $20k (the health benefits were very nice; I could have made more in the private sector). Hardly princely wages, but I've always made a point of shopping at locally-owned businesses and trying to keep my money in our community. Those public employees listed above do much the same. They shop in local stores, they hire local services, they pay local rents/mortgage payments.

Take away their jobs, and what? The private sector will make up for it? I don't think so.

That's a great article, Six_of_One. I'd like to know the total compensation, including stock options and bonuses, of those in Oregon's financial sector. I suspect that we'd REALLY see some eye-popping numbers. But, of course, since that's "private" (completely unsubsidized by the taxpayers) industry, that compensation has no effect on anybody's taxes.

A few years ago, after Measure 8 passed, some of us in the public sector publicized the names of some of the major contributors to that initiative. We believed that, since these people apparently didn't want to do business with public employees, that we would be better off not patronizing their firms.

My heavens, you should have heard the screams from the likes of Boyd Coffee Co., Monarch Motor Lodge, Shiloh Inns, and many others. It was absolutely un-Amerikun that someone would boycott a private industry firm just because they espoused their little old political beliefs.

Publicize away, folks. You're right. You have a right to. But don't be surprised if, somewhere down the line, public employees, who will receive numerous hate calls and death threats (and they will), don't push back economically in some way. After all, it's their right, too.

six of one

Why are you having trouble grasping the issue? It's not that complicated.

You've somehow reduced the outrage over the excesses of 1103 people making over 100,000 to your
just over 20K with all the goodness of supporting the local community?

Your own salary, your choosing to shop at locally-owned businesses and trying to keep your my money in our community is entirely irrelevant.
And you have no idea of the level of those other high paid public employees doing the same. As if it justifies their outrageous compensation.

They have more to spend on themselves so it's good for the community?

The fact is there are many of those positions that are unnecessary and many more who are needlessly over compensated.
The public deserves to have government services provided by a reasonable and responsible level of cost.
This list is the opposite.
Saying they "shop in local stores, they hire local services, they pay local rents/mortgage payments" is insulting.
These are very high paying jobs we're talking about.
Do you not get that?
Why is the pay so high is the question?
Could the same jobs be filled with less compensation?
Of course they could could and the employee would be very happy getting 120k instead of 145K.

Interesting to note that Mult Co DA Mike Shrunk only makes just over $50k in salary and total compensation of $73k while his two chief deputies each make more than $149k in salary and total compensation of $193k. Something is out of whack!

The O still has its public employee salary database up, although the data are now two years old.

http://www.oregonlive.com/special/index.ssf/2009/01/query.html

If my salary at the post office is up on the internet for all to see (and it's nothing near what these clowns get), why does the city not put up their payroll?

You're missing the point, Ben. The public employees you're attacking pump money through our local economy. Why are you attacking the people who pay your salary, Ben? Why are you attacking the people who patronize your business? Why is it "insulting" to point out the truth?

Who are you, Ben, to determine which employees are necessary to local government and services? Sure, the public deserves to have services provided at a reasonable and responsible level. Have you compared the rate of public compensation with the rate of private compensation for similar positions?

And why is it that public employees making decent wages so much more an outrage to you than the growing income disparities in private business? Really, Ben, that is far more likely to have a serious impact on you and yours.

Unless, of course, you're one of the ultra-wealthy, in which case I have no sympathy for you or your opinions.

Six_of_one you are the one missing the point. Who is it that pays your salary? The taxpayers are the ones footing the bill for every public sector employee. Otherwise, the people who pay your wages are more then a bit upset about how much is going to total employee compensatin.

Now, I doubt anyone on here begrudges you your 20k salary. What we are questioning are those making way above the state average (think that's around 35k) annual income. Does the public really need to foot the bill for those high income earners???

Pleas Six_of_one and other defenders please explain that for us.

6 of 1
You're having trouble reading and comprehending.
It's you missing the point.

And you're raising an entirely meaningless point about them "pumping money through our local economy". So what? Everyone working does.
That has nothing to do with their level of compensation.
Or regarding how many of them are really needed.

You call it attacking people to question the legitimacy of these expenditures.

How self serving of you. Is that part of the rhetoric that leads to such over compensation? If any elected official gripes, you bureaucrats hit them with the "attacking" people BS?

They "pay my salary"?????

Oh gee, well give them a raise?

Honestly your nonsense really is insultingly stupid.

The problem is no one is determining which employees are necessary to local government and services or how to reasonably control compensation. So it mushrooms out of control.

And the public doesn't get to have services provided at a reasonable and responsible level.

Only a entrenched bureaucrat or a knucklehead can look at that list and not know the compensation is out of whack with the rate of private compensation for similar positions.

Your ignorance of the non public employment sector is astounding.

But your real dance is here
"And why is it that public employees making decent wages so much more an outrage"

That is such a typical pitch by a bureaucrat. Those decent wages would remain exceedingly decent even if they were heavily reduced.
It's insulting for you to be trying to pitch that the exceedingly decent compensation of $163,000 would some how no longer be decent at $130,000.

The PDC, Port of Portland, Metro, TriMet and many other agencies are filled with these over compensated positions and they're always creating busy work to sustain their gravy train.

You're at work at a public job attempting to defend it and divert criticism. You are part of the problem.

You have disdain for the taxpayers.

Thanks Ben....6 of 1 is really out of touch.

6 of 1... wow, county employee salaries are saving local businesses! We should TRIPLE the salaries then, right? That will only help out local businesses even MORE!

A friend of mine works for the Multnomah County Health Department as a home health nurse. She cares for elderly low-income clients, many of whom are house-bound. She helps them manage their illnesses, keeps track of their medications, and in general fights a losing battle to keep them healthy in the face of poverty, poor nutrition, and lack of education or understanding about their illness. It is cheaper for the county to send her out to their apartments than to send the patients into nursing homes, their next (and often final) stop.

You're missing the point, Ben. The public employees you're attacking pump money through our local economy.

Actually, it's you that's missing the point. You've fallen prey to a common view of modern capitalism: that anything that provides "input" into the economy deserves defending (if it involves human labor).

Except that government was never meant to be an "input" to the economy. In fact, Jefferson and Franklin had the opposite view. Here's Jefferson:

"Our economy should be the product of men's labor. To fund our Government means not that we purchase men's labor, but that we are investing in the preservation of our rights. No man should seek to govern as a means of labor; for if Government becomes but another means of wealth, we will have lost all that we have sought to attain. Should Government then be a mere Corporation?"

If that's too confusing for you, let me clarify: Government was never meant to be a supporting part of the national economy. The more it becomes so, the more we get citizens like you who buy entirely the idea that it should act as a corporation, and that employing people makes it an economic necessity.

Who are you, Ben, to determine which employees are necessary to local government and services?

I'm guessing he's a citizen, which means he is the *exact* kind of person who ought to be watching carefully where his money and public servants are going (and what they're doing).

You see, this is the heart of the problem--governments as employers, and public servants as "employees", and a parasitic devil's bargain that requires government (like a corporation) "grow" to survive. It disgusts me. It should disgust you too--but you're a government employee or friends with one, aren't you?

And why is it that public employees making decent wages

Based on that list of salaries, for several fields that I'm intimately familiar with, they're not "decent" wages--they're HIGH wages. Very high, overall.

LOL, I was a "bureaucrat"? That's priceless, thanks for the laugh. I was an entry-level public service rep and it was the worst job I've had since working at McDs in high school.

For the record, I was (emphasis on WAS) a public employee for about a year and a half, several years ago. The private sector pays better. Also the abuse one catches as public employee (amply illustrated by you here, Ben) isn't worth the wages at the lower levels. I have, in fact, spent most of my life working in the pubic sector, Ben, and I suspect I know it better than you. It's rather ironic that you accuse me of limited comprehension skills while missing the past tense in my previous post.

Your last comment, Ben, was pretty much full of derp derp derp. You're not "questioning the validity" of public salaries, you're howling for wage cuts for public employees. You also failed to address the question of whether or not public wages are comparable to similar compensation packages in the private sector.

Being a taxpayer, I don't particularly have much disdain for my fellow taxpayers (just jackasses like you, to be frank), but why do you have so much disdain for the people providing public services to our community?

Darrin, you mentioned the average Oregon wage stands at about $35k. Were you thinking per person or per working family According to this, median wages in Oregon for a 4 person family are about $58,737. The Oregon Blue Book puts us at a per capita income of about $35k in 2007. I think if we're going to talk about average or median wage for the private sector, it would be useful to see what the average or median wage for Multnomah County public employees is. I didn't have any luck on the MC website and no one was in the budget office to answer the question. Out to lunch, I imagine.

Before we get all worked up over those top figures, we might want to look at the median/mode and see if it's inline with median/mode for the state and also whether or not those compensation packages are out of line with equivalent public sector jobs. Do those comparisons seem relevant?

The private sector pays better.

Nonsense. that depends entirely on the field you're in; you can't characterize the entire government that way,a s much as you'd like to. And even the governor himself has pointed out that non-salary benefits for public employees in Oregon are noticeably higher in the public sector, across the board.

Being a taxpayer, I don't particularly have much disdain for my fellow taxpayers

Except that you do, you have, and you just did.

Before we get all worked up over those top figures, we might want to look at the median/mode

Still missing the point, big guy. Generalizing about statistical averages of public vs. private is like two people off in the corner at a party arguing about which olive goes better with the cracker.

"The public employees you're attacking pump money through our local economy."

Umm, I beg your pardon. A sizable chunk of what we pay is PERS funds that sit in a box.

The other issue I have is if we give $1 to Mult County, it most goes for wages and benes and some services.

If we leave the same dollar with private business, they invest, buy eqpt, hire people, pay salary/prop taxes, ship things and actually produce a product that will bring income back to Oregon.

I guess my point is that instead of giving Mult County $1, you'd get a lot higher return if you just left it with the taxpayer.

Bill (July 26, 10:02 am): Mr. Schrunk's county salary is so low because district attorneys, including Mr. Schrunk, are paid partly by the county and partly by the state. I don't know what the current state contribution is, but when the county raised the DA's county salary from $14,000 to $35,000, the state was paying $90,000, for a total salary at that time of $125,000.
http://www2.co.multnomah.or.us/cfm/boardclerk/viewdetail.cfm?DocID=9664

I should have said that the raise I mentioned was in 2005.

rural resident; you wrote that "some of us" (that includes you in my thinking), being public employees, boycotted businesses that frowned on publishing salaries and benefits from the private sector.

If I have unmitigated proof that a public employee, singular or in a group, used public monies to boycott, taint the awarding of contracts, agreements, or processing any application, permit against me, I will very likely seek legal action. I have had that happen to me in the past, but no more. At that time I thought you just had to play their game since they held the best hand, and I had many more years having to deal with those kind of prejudices . Not any more. The time has come.

Hmmm.... the public sector doesn't take pay cuts like the private sector. The public sector gets retirement guarantees and health insurance in retirement unlike the vast majority of the private sector. And there is no "at will" employment for public sector union employees.... and when I started at my current job, multnomah county was paying more for the position I had (and did for a number of years).... and they likely had better benefits.... And my only public sector work was summer jobs in college... my adult life has all been private sector.

If we justify public sector salaries based on their contribution to the "local economy", then what limits are there, really? Why not make *everybody* a public employee, then?

Let's all admit one thing here, shall we? The majority of people getting paid by the County (or City) based their application at least in part on the promise of better job security, benefits, and opportunities given to those "in the system". Anybody denying that is lying.

...And anybody who doubts it should check out how many applications every single job (of any level) gets at the city and county level. Often it's *ten times* the response that private sector jobs get. Wonder why that is?

1/2Dozen; that is mostly true, but here's some other perks the more-long-timers spoke of; having worked for the feds and a city in my earlier years, I soon learned that many employees also took the jobs for the easy times on the job.

The noon hour usally extended to 1 1/2 hours or more; slipping in to work 20 minutes late was common; the breaks were much longer than allotted; the telephone time for personal business was extensive; coming in from "field work" at 3:30PM to make the 5:00 check out time was common; the friday early-leaving-for-personal-business was common; and the creation of a 5 day vacation out of a friday or monday holiday was easy. The staff meetings were extensive with no net result, but it passed the time and the coffee and donuts were good.

If I have unmitigated proof that a public employee, singular or in a group, used public monies to boycott, taint the awarding of contracts, agreements, or processing any application, permit against me, I will very likely seek legal action. I have had that happen to me in the past, but no more. At that time I thought you just had to play their game since they held the best hand, and I had many more years having to deal with those kind of prejudices . Not any more. The time has come.

Nobody's talking about "public money." I don't know how to break it to you, but public employees actually have the right to spend their earnings as they see fit. Public employees' earnings, PERS benefits, or other compensation are not "public funds."

And many of them would see fit not to spend money with businesses that attack their ability to earn a living. If they want to avoid certain hotels, restaurants, computer shops, or purveyors of anything else, they will do so. And you will not have anything to say about it. Sue all you want, buddy. We'll see who wins.

Pshaw! Portland has a lot to learn when it comes to indulging at the public trough. There is a wire story out today (7/26) about Bell, California, a city of maybe 40,000 people in East L.A. County. The mayor and the city council are pulling down six-figure salaries for part-time positions while, for example, the chief of police is paid almost $800,000/year. The public is said to be "outraged," but I say, "Thanks for showin' us the way!!

*correction*correction*corecshun*

I misquoted the story about government salaries in Bell, California. The city manager makes almost $800,000/year, not the chief of police. The chief of police gets $457,000/year. In a town of 40,000 people. Top that, Portland!!!

It's a war zone over here.

I still want to know how not a single person at DHS got fired over that poor child that was ripped to shreds over many months and killed in the bathtub by parents who had been reported multiple times as dangerous and unfit...

Someone needs to do an art project on that. Line up all images and quotes related to the story, intermingled with the names and salaries of all the people in the social services agency that received anguished calls from neighbors, teachers, grandparents, classmate parents, begging them to check up on why the child always looked like she had been brutalized the night before.

"The City Council, which booted out its police chief, city manager and assistant city manager at an emergency meeting on Thursday"

Don't forget, CALPERS like PERS is defined benefit, so I betcha these guys will get a lifetime at close totheir last full year of employ.

I'd bet anyone that the City Mgr and Police Chief are 1 and 2 on CALPERS payouts.

Don't give Leonard any more ideas on how to spend our money!!!!

The City Manager is expected to be California's first millionaire pensioner: in less than a decade, he'll be receiving over $1 million in pension each year.