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Also, as I know you have expressed serious concerns about using data in a misleading way, the SCO reports average wages for all employees reported.

Some may consider this misleading as it includes employees who worked for as little as one day for the year. In some cases, like the City of Santa Clarita, the majority of employees are part-time, which makes the SCO-reported average even more misleading.

I remember a school district in which 60% of the “employees” being used in the SCO-reported average made $0!

This is an additional area in which TransparentCalifornia differs in that we make an attempt to filter our most of these non-applicable employees when reporting average pay.

It is a very useful site, especially when people have a hard time believing the excessive nature of public pay, as the SCO site tends to carry more authority.

Aside from the inclusion of names in Transparent California, the sites are very similar in that the compensation values reported are almost always identical. They do differ sometimes, however, usually because the SCO data is inaccurate and contains errors, errors that are easier to identify by name.

I discuss a handful of the errors found in the SCO data here:

http://unionwatch.org/comparing-compensation-information-on-transparent-california-and-state-controllers-site/

An alternative to Transparent California…….without names.

I’ve just glanced at it, so far I say it’s the preferable site.

http://www.publicpay.ca.gov

Government pay apologists like to use “education level” as justification for much of the public-private pay differential. But they get cause and effect reversed.

Government employees often have education levels not necessary to get the job done — because the over-educated employees find government work (not performance-based, great job security, many holidays, benefits, pay, etc.) a better choice than private sector employment.

More and more, today’s firefighters have college degrees and even graduate degrees — unnecessary education to have to be a good firefighter.

Moreover, this overeducated govt worker tendency causes a misallocation of labor — with many of our more intelligent people underutilizing their (subsidized) education and brains in government jobs that “blue collar” workers could be doing. Society is less productive as a result.

It doesn’t look like my previous comment went through and I’m too tired to retype it and find my way through this wall of comments.

The LADWP salaries are real and California state employees who retired pre-2000 should be the ones most outraged at what is going on in California these days: http://www.publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/PositionDetail.aspx?employeeid=10090356

Douglas,

You are wrong. As you point out, Skipping Dog was also wrong when he lied and made up the charge that I was mixing pay and benefits to mislead and offered 0 examples in support of his allegation.

You are also ruining my forthcoming story by discovering that the LADWP garage attendants not only make 250% the avg salary of garage attendants in LA, but make 150% the salary of garage attendants who work for the City of LA!

What other people wrote based on our data is not something I can control, nor is it fair of you to attribute their statements to me. I may even share your concerns about conflating pay and pay+benefits…

It is my hope that when you finally acknowledge that the pay values being reported by the City of LA are pay, and see how that garage attendants for the LADWP AVERAGED $78,000 a year in 2013, you consider the possibility that public pay in California is not representative of a market demand for labor, but is mostly driven by excessive abuses endemic to a system where the costs are dispersed and the benefits concentrated.

I, too, thought it was “inconceivable” that a customer service rep can make $83k a year in pay alone, as you said previously. I had no idea the problem was this bad until the agencies in California showed me so.

Note, too, how we’ve reached a point where the City’s garage attendants making $50k+ is considered reasonable. This is a big part of the problem w/ public pay – it has to be extremely egregious to generate the public will necessary to enact (modest) reforms. The fact that $50k in pay alone for a garage attendant is testament to that. It DOES NOT EXIST in the City of LA outside of govt, even less so nationally. But we tolerate it because its not terribly egregious, just mildly so!

BTW the avg salary for customer service rep is only $81.3k. I respond to your comments from home and am mostly pulling these numbers by memory, which is why I incorrectly referred to it as $83k earlier.

I respect you and sincerely apologize for my previous rude behavior.

I welcome your comments and you are more than welcome to e-mail me through site and we can exchange e-mail addresses from there if you like.

There is no need for you to wait for us to post it, the Controller’s Office has the data up already: http://www.publicpay.ca.gov/Reports/PositionDetail.aspx?employeeid=10093169

This not only demonstrates that the average wages are $78k for garage attendants, it further highlights how misleading pay ranges are.

This is the listed pay range: $49,673 – $79,573 which is laughably wide. Moreover, let me know how many you find with $50k in base pay 🙂

Make sure you are looking at garage attendants in the correct department too.

Here is a 2012 article about the above: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-08/los-angeles-s-100-000-carpenters-show-influence-of-water-department-union.html

We will have this data on our site in the next 1-2 weeks, in which case you can easily search it and compare that the values we report as pay are the exact ones the SCO considers pay, and benefits are benefits.

Please shoot me an e-mail if you have any other questions or if you ever find a single instance in which you believe I have used data misleadingly so that I may review your concerns.

Thank you.

Robert,
Sorry to bother you again, I searched Transparent California, city of Los Angeles, “garage attendant”, and found 219 names.

Typically, their “regular pay” was in the $49,000 to $54,000 range. They typically show $10,000 to $15,000 “total benefits”, with “total pay and benefits” in the $68,000 to $78,000 range (including OT.)

There may be something nefarious about the attendants at DWP, but my money says “What we have here, is a failure to communicate. ”
…………….
I recently spent several days visiting and commenting on the website “investors.com” about an article ” The Pension Crisis Next Door: Scranton, Pa” in which I say Stephen Moore (Heritage Foundation) deliberately (in my opinion) tried to mislead the readers that hundreds of LA policemen have pensions of over $500,000 a year. They were obviously one time drop payments, and most were so noted on TC website, for those who knew or bothered to look, but I say the potential for abuse is great.
……………….
Mark Bucher recently wrote an article for Forbes entitled
” Hundreds Of California Government Employees Are Paid Over $400,000 A Year”

Mr. Bucher, was referencing TC data which clearly (if you care and know how to look) referred to one time payments, apparently final year vacation buybacks, not normal salary.

If you recall our discussion of “how much I ‘make'”, I said I make $4,200 a month, $50 grand a year.

English is my native language. According to a test I took in college, my comprehension is above average. (yes, tall, good looking, AND intelligent) I have a good grasp of semantics and syntax.

When Mr. Bucher says “Government Employees Are Paid Over $400,000 A Year”

And Mr. Moore says “hundreds of “public servants” who hit the jackpot with annual pensions of half a million a year.”

I say they are implying that these are regular yearly payments, not one time payouts. And I think they know full well they are not. The potential for abuse is great, and shame on these two men and others for misusing the data.
……………..
And, when our private sector forklift guy who “earns” $50,000 a year gets piissed because some website says a garage attendant “earns” $78,000, that is misleading.

Again, I am a fan of Carl “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” Sagan.

Until otherwise proven, I will assume that a garage attendant does NOT “make” $78,000 a year. As Skipping Dog said “Nothing like mixing and matching salary, overtime, and total compensation to make your case,”

Surely this horse must be dead by now.

I’ll wait for the article.

Doug, they do label it.

Gross Pay: $83k.

Benefits: $0.

E-mail to them asking why benefits are $0, “The City of LA calculates benefits on an actuarial basis and does not track the cost of benefits on an employee-specific level which is why no benefits are included in the report provided.”

I reply: can you please confirm what does the gross pay amount you gave us represent:

“The gross pay amount represents the total form of all wages paid to the employee that are considered Medicare taxable.” Re-read this definition. There are no benefits in here.

This is what I’m trying to tell you: It’s inconceivable there would be that much “pay”.

There is. You can just e-mail the City and make a public records request for this info yourself if you don’t believe me.

For the medicare, ss taxes, etc. those ARE NOT INCLUDED in total pay. I don’t know what else to say.

The $83k is the gross pay amount.

This is getting hard to continue here, if you’d like to discuss this further feel free to e-mail me through the site. I can even e-mail you the exact file they gave us so you can see the numbers for yourself.