
California State Salaries - marcamillion
http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/?name=&agency=&salarylevel=100000
======
kennethn
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
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.

~~~
kennethn
If institutions like UCLA and UCSF want to be world leaders, they need to pay
top dollar to attract the best surgical talent. That's just reality.

P.S. I never said my child was healthy.

------
jonhendry
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
Whoa. A college football coach is the highest paid california state employee?
Seems like california is focused on the wrong things.

~~~
tedunangst
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.

~~~
ojbyrne
[http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/...](http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=easterbrook/101207_tuesday_morning_quarterback&sportCat=nfl)

"no college or university in the United States has an athletic department that
is financially self-sustaining."

~~~
tedunangst
[http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/REV_EXP_201...](http://www.ncaapublications.com/productdownloads/REV_EXP_2010.pdf)

BCS: "Between 50 and 60 percent of football and men's basketball programs have
reported net generated revenues (surpluses) for each of the five years
reported."

Translation: football makes money, other sports lose money.

FBS: "Only two percent of football programs reported net generated revenues."

Translation: When your program sucks, your revenue sucks too.

Also note that all 14 programs that made money overall were BCS teams.

------
danilocampos
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
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.

~~~
SamReidHughes
To be fair, that guy's salary is a few hundred bucks over $400k, while Obama's
is exactly $400000.

------
bugsy
Hm, getting down to page 2500 of results, we see that civil engineer salaries
are going down each year.

------
fungobat
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
What's obsurd is the increase from 2009 to 2010.

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

~~~
tedkimble
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.

~~~
marcamillion
I hear you tedkimble...and you are right. Perhaps the data isn't all complete
- but that assessment isn't that far off.

Restrict the searches to California Highway Patrol officers. You will see
pages and pages of them with double digit salary increases year on year.

Might not be 100%...but I mean...really.

The reason this is such a major injustice, is because California is then
forced to cut certain welfare programs to those who really need it (i.e. the
most vulnerable) because they can't afford it.

Meanwhile, Mr. 5-0 goes home with a 300K pension at 60.

Just saying, something is odd with that picture. No matter how you twist the
data.

Edit: For instance tedkimble, look at this guy on page 4(don't mean to call
him out, but I wanted to go in the median somewhere and bottom of page 4 seems
to fit the bill):

>Darrell L Brooks CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL SERGEANT, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY
PATROL $212,049.00 $125,744.00 $126,602.00

He took a pay cut from 2008 to 2009 (by 0.67% approx) and from 2009 to 2010
got a pay raise of 68.4% ? How is that even right ? That seems to be a common
pattern - for the highway patrol guys.

I have no axe to grind here....but this seems like injustice to the nth
degree.

Edit 2: Just for completeness, here are some others:

>Terry D Dunn CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL SERGEANT, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL
$202,446.00 $125,182.00 $120,518.00

>Paul E Reyes CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL
$203,197.00 $161,532.00 $166,468.0

>Joseph W Sobkowiak CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATROL OFFICER, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY
PATROL $197,704.00 $138,645.00 $142,325.00

~~~
Anechoic
> _He took a pay cut from 2008 to 2009 (by 0.67% approx) and from 2009 to 2010
> got a pay raise of 68.4% ? How is that even right ? That seems to be a
> common pattern - for the highway patrol guys._

That's likely overtime, not an increase in salary.

------
abhikshah
The table needs context. How much could the same person make in private
industry for a similar job?

~~~
a5seo
True, but you could also ask how much value they or their dept. add. What's
their NPV as an employee?

~~~
jonhendry
There's a pernicious assumption hiding there that public employees by
definition must not deserve or earn their pay, whereas private employees doing
the same work and making the same amount do.

~~~
a5seo
Not really. It's completely fair for taxpayers to question the NPV of their
employees (aka government workers).

Questioning it doesn't mean the NPV is negative. After all, private employers
do this all the time. They decide a line of business provides an insufficient
return on capital or doesn't fit the core, and they shut it down. Other times
they find the NPV is awesome and pour on the investment. Since taxpayers are
"the boss," this is completely appropriate.

If anything, the pernicious assumption runs precisely the opposite direction:
that anyone who dare question the value to cost ratio of our bureaucratic
overlords be attacked.

------
zemaj
I'm guessing there is some background missing on those highest payed - for
example a discussion on why coach salaries are so high
[http://www.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2009/09/20/2009...](http://www.azcentral.com/sports/asu/articles/2009/09/20/20090920athleticsalaries0919-CP.html#ixzz1ArRv2RiB)
They are not funded out of taxpayer money.

------
polymath21
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.

------
marcamillion
Looks like we crashed the site :|

------
alsomike
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
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.

~~~
rdtsc
> some significant financial incentives ...

Oh I understand that but a $500k increase from $200k to $700k ?

~~~
S_A_P
Could just mean that the person didnt work a full year previously. Numbers
without real context dont really help, me thinks.

~~~
rdtsc
Agreed. The numbers just don't make much sense without that context.

------
alsomike
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=...](http://www.nirsonline.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=395)

------
rick888
The lowest salary on the last page is $103,000

It's no surprise that the state is bankrupt

~~~
amock
That's because by default it only shows salaries over $100,000.

~~~
rick888
it doesn't change the fact that thousands of state employees are getting paid
over 100,000 per year and the state is bankrupt.

