And 3% @ 50 ended in 2012.

Keep it under your hat.

“Average full-time municipal employee compensation statewide was $120,569.”

I am sure TL is suitably impressed by the big shiny numbers. Which was the point of the author (also TL, by the way, another one)

Transparent California believes, very strongly, apparently, that total compensation is the proper value to use for comparison. Which would be copacetic, *if* they clearly explained that these are not “wages”, and should not be compared to private sector “wages”.

I don’t recall any media, right, left, or moderate, listing private sector total compensation. Most CWD readers are aware of the difference. Most others are not, thus the jaw dropping or “stunning” response to $120,569 compensation.

In California, the average wage is about $53,000. The average wage for public sector workers is about $70,000. It has been a truism for years that public sector compensation is about 40% higher than private. Apples and oranges. At the same time as these discrepancies in overall *average* salaries, rigid economic studies have consistently shown public workers earn lower cash wages than equivalent private sector workers. The only disagreement has been in the value of benefits.

This is one reason why, in my opinion, “Stunning data on average compensation for municipal employees in California”, both the title and the article, are a classic example of tabloid journalism.

A second reason is, to quote SkippingDog, the TC data is “…..mixing and matching salary, overtime, and total compensation to make your case,”

We don’t know what compensation is included in the $120,569 “average.” I doubt that Mr. Lifson knows. I don’t think even Transparent California always knows. We do know that if pension costs are included, they are the actual ARC for this year, not the normal cost. If overtime is included in the average, there is no chance of reasonable comparison to private sector compensation.

More sensationalism is in publishing total compensation of some of the highest paid workers. These often contain unexplained one time payments resulting in highly inflated compensation which is portrayed as a normal annual salary.

And overtime. A wild card. It is not a part of the “average wage” or “average compensation”. We just went through this example lately where a fireman was basically accused of being overpaid because his city made a conscious decision to reduce the number of firemen and rely on overtime to meet staffing levels.

If overtime is included in the listed ” average compensation ” of $120,569, it should not be. State and local governments have reduced their staff in the last five years, if a city has nine employees where there once were ten, and some of them work OT to compensate, that does not make that worker “overpaid”.

It’s fine and useful to publish the OT used by each individual and department, but to include it in average pay is misleading.

Kudos (I think, I’ll take a closer look later) to the State Controllers Office. They seem to be able to publish much of this same information by position number, without publishing the name of the worker. But I believe the SCO has a disclaimer similar to TC. They are not responsible for inaccurate information.

There is no way to renege TL, unless you want a hard cot for a bed. Otherwise, if you truly don’t want public services, move to a piece of sand and a thatched roof in Borneo or somewhere. Watch out for the snakes and spiders.

Oh no its not ………. it’s a perfect example of the Taxpayer-“ripoff” now typical everywhere.

Taxpayer must find a way to RENEGE on all of these truly OUTRAGEOUS pension promises.

It’s a classic example of tabloid journalism. Why am I not surprised that you fell for it?

Transparent California is interesting, but their data is not reliable for serious comparison.

So far you kill off old people, government workers…..who is next immigrants, the sick, disabled?