State Controller Betty T. Yee disclosed the 2014 payroll data from 54 counties and 468 cities, which included information on more than 600,000 employees. The disclosure is part of the controller’s latest update to the “Government Compensation in California” website.

The open government online portal allows users to map compensation levels throughout the state, assemble charts, evaluate payroll trends and export data for in-depth statistical analysis.

Vernon: Smallest City, Biggest Pay

The state controller’s public employee payroll website has become a powerful tool for journalists and citizen watchdogs to identify wasteful spending and corruption in local government.

Among the municipalities with questionable payroll data from 2014: the city of Vernon. Although it is the least populous city in California, with just 123 residents, Vernon has double number of employees. And those employees earn $103,601 per year in salary — the highest average salary in the state. Vernon employees also take home, on average, another $32,462 per year in health and retirement benefits.

Vernon’s top salary is followed by the city of Hayward with $94,041 average salary, and Palm Desert at $89,582 in average salary. The state controller’s office notes that the average wages for city governments overall fell by 3 percent to $59,614.

In 2014, the average salary for county employees increased by approximately 3 percent to $60,993. At the county level, the nearly 19,000 employees at Santa Clara County received the highest average wage, earning $78,486 per year in wages and $27,655 in retirement and health benefits.

9 Local Governments Fail to Disclose Data

The controller’s office classified six cities as non-compliant entities for having “filed a compensation report that was incomplete, was in a format different than the one requested by the Controller’s Office, or was submitted after the reporting deadline.” San Francisco, the largest non-compliant entity joined the cities of Bell, Compton, Covina, Dana Point and Santa Ana on the list of non-compliant entities.

The counties of Modoc, Monterey and Riverside were the three counties, or 5.3 percent, that failed to file.

The city and county of Los Angeles remain the largest local government agencies. Los Angeles County employs 103,338 people with a cumulative wage of $7.2 billion in annual salary and $2.76 billion in health and retirement benefits. The city of Los Angeles paid out $4.5 billion in wages and $703 million in health and retirement benefits.

Yee’s latest disclosure builds on the work of her predecessor. In 2010, following the high-profile corruption case at the city of Bell, then-Controller John Chiang didn’t wait around for local governments to clean up their act. He ordered cities, counties and special districts, under Government Code sections 12463 and 53892, to share salary and other wage information with his office. Initially, some local governments balked, then dragged their feet in disclosing the payroll data.

To access State Controller Betty Yee’s payroll database, go to publicpay.ca.gov.

Top 10 Highest County Employees in California

1. Faculty Physician-Contract: $1,360,744
Kern County

2.Faculty Physician-Contract: $1,295,929
Kern County

3.Orthopedic Surgeon-Contract: $1,092,651
Kern County

4. Chairman, Department of Surgery: $851,665
Kern County

5. Medical Director II: $775,999
Los Angeles County

6.Physician – VMC: $760,461
Santa Clara County

7. Chief Physician III Surgery-Neurological: $728,489
Los Angeles County

8. Physician: $727,864
San Joaquin County

9. Physician – VMC: $684,365
Santa Clara County

10. Physician – VMC: $658,745
Santa Clara County

Top 10 Highest City Employees in California

1. Police Sergeant: $592,652
City of Burbank

2. Fire Chief: $487,871
City of Richmond

3. Chief Of Police: $487,644
City of El Monte

4. City Manager: $470,249
City of Lincoln

5. City Manager: $419,840
City of West Covina

6. City Attorney: $412,211
City of Escondido

7. Power Engineering Manager: $403,271
City of Los Angeles

8. Assistant City Manager:
$396,548
City of Oxnard

9.City Manager: $395,501
City of Escondido

10. Police Officer (PERS): $393,573
City of Oakland

Full-time teachers are paid six-figure salaries to work for their union while keeping their school district seniority and pensions afloat. The dual work arrangements are built into union contracts.

“This has been going on for years, and it’s hard to know how widespread it is,” said Larry Sand, who has spotlighted the arrangements at unionwatch.org and heads the nonprofit California Teachers Empowerment Network. “It varies district by district and each contract has to be looked into. … A lot of the time, school board members don’t even know, or they are pressured by the unions to keep a policy in place.”

Built into the contract

As included in the teaching contract at the San Diego Unified School District, “when negotiations with the District are scheduled during working hours, association representatives will be released from work without loss of pay.”

The contract in the Bakersfield City School District provides a full-time leave of absence for the teachers union president to tend to association business: “The president shall be paid in the usual manner as if he/she were a regular employee of the District and shall suffer no reduction in salary.”

And in the Fountain Valley School District in Orange County, the union president can devote one day per week to union business, costing taxpayers up to $22,230 per year, according to unionwatch.org.

A union official who has received dual salaries said the arrangements are helpful.

“There is a lot of mutual benefit there,” said Michela Cichoki. “Some are teaching partners, and so there is a period of release for officers. And a lot of the time they are in meetings with the district, and they are teacher representatives on those committees, representing the teachers.”

In 2012, Cichoki received a pay package worth $242,754 for service as secretary-treasurer of the California Teachers Association. The same year, Cichoki was paid a package worth $118,818 from the San Bernardino City Unified School District for her work as a “hearing panel member.”

Cichoki’s case illustrates the complicated formula of reimbursement at the upper levels of the union/school district entanglement.

The union reimbursed the district for her package, although she was allowed to maintain her pension while gone by paying her share from her pocket.

“I was released from the school district while I was at CTA,” Cichoki said. “It’s in the [education] code that we can be released for union work, and the district can ask for reimbursement, and that comes from the union so that no taxpayer funds are paying for it.”

Dean Vogel, past president of the California Teachers Association, received a pay package worth $277,356 in 2012, the last year records are available. In 2013, while serving as president of the state’s teacher union, public records show he received $97,542 for working on “special assignment” in the Vacaville Unified School District.

The union may have reimbursed the district for Vogel’s pay package, as in the case of Cichoki. A spokeswoman for the CTA did not return calls.

Union work should be kept separate

Sand blames the local school board members for allowing teachers who should be in the classroom to instead conduct union work on taxpayer time.

“The school boards should be serving the public instead of serving the union,” Sand said.

The dual salary arrangements have drawn legal complaints in other states, similar to the noise being made by the teachers who contend they shouldn’t have to pay union dues that go to efforts they don’t support.

Some teachers also believe their union-connected colleagues shouldn’t be allowed to spend time outside the classroom when their job is to teach.

A lawsuit in Pennsylvania challenges the arrangement in the Philadelphia School District, where up to 63 teachers are allowed to gain seniority, accrue pension benefits and receive insurance, just as they would as teachers, while engaging in union activities.

Steve Miller can be reached at 517-775-9952 and avalanche50@hotmail.com. His website is www.Avalanche50.com

The truth? It’s an assault on the middle class

Allowing BART employees higher salaries and benefits on their already-high compensation will only result in increasing costs and increased fares for the riders.

It’s too easy to negotiate with other people’s money, and even easier to end up giving it away.