Inside UDJ by Editor K.C. Meadows

Here's what the Sac Bee's Web site is saying about the salary information it got on state workers.

The Sacramento Bee launched last week a searchable online database which lists the salaries of state employees. Reactions were mixed to the database and The Bee experienced a deluge of traffic and complaints from state workers. Public Editor Armando Acuña responded to the varied responses by saying that state workers are accountable to the public for whom they work. He also said “The Bee’s posting last week of an online database making it easy to look up the salaries of state workers by name has made two things clear: First, many state workers are irate, complaining it is an invasion of their privacy. Second, the database is wildly popular, with more than 2 million page views in just the first three days, setting a sacbee.com record by a quantum leap that’s growing each day.” A significant number of state employees fault the paper for making the information so readily available, because those who want to know “should have to do the ‘homework,’” to find it, in the words of one employee. They castigated the paper as irresponsible for making it easy to find the information by simply inputting someone’s last name. The state of California already publishes an online directory of workers at www.cold.ca.gov. Acuña summed up the argument well by saying “If you work for the government, you are a public employee, with all that entails. You are paid by taxpayers, who are entitled to know how much you are paid, not in some abstract way but in real dollars and cents.” Sacramento Bee Editor Melanie Sill responded to reader questions about the state employee pay database and encouraged people to comment on the site.