What's with the salaries?
I've had a couple of people ask me what happened to our salary requests from the city and the county. I have the salary information in hand and we are looking at what to do with it and how to present it. I have also asked for the same information from the Mendocino Office of Education, the Ukiah Unified School District and Mendocino College. I have been researching what other newspapers have done with similar information and it ranges from publishing just the salaries of department heads and higher to creating an online searchable data bank of all the names and salary information. Even with the information in hand, there is a lot of sifting and clarification involved. None of the information is simply presented. The lists include base salary plus overtime plus unspecificed "other compensation" which can be different for each person. Some of the employees listed were only there part of the year so their salaries look skewed but information about which is which is not given. Anything we do with the information will have to come with long lists of explanations and caveats. Anyway, we are indeed working on it.
Comments
In the meantime, some will be wondering why Paul Tichinin's salary -- at $120,000 -- gets a lot more play than others'.
Among the others, to take one odd example: Anderson Valley's longtime resident deputy -- whose comfy and apparently permanent tenure's apparently done nothing to impede the methedrine machine regularly deplored by the Sheriff on previously-public radio -- is said to draw in excess of $160,000 a year.
Another odd example -- I'll spare you the details, so you can enjoy putting the pieces together -- is to be found among newish, lavishly-compensated staff in the Mental Health Department, or sub-Department, or whatever this particular division of the public salary mill and patronage/protection system is calling itself these days.
Posted by: @T | March 11, 2008 01:47 PM