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California Highway Patrol salaries

sacbee.com

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Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#71

Post by pfedor »

patrickgzill wrote: post #41
waterlesscloud wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also includes being a first responder to accidents. And watching over the cleanup of said accidents. People burned alive in cars. Children strewn across highways. And knowing every violation stop is a potential end to your life. Who knows who that driver is and what they're going to do? Do I want the job? No thanks. They're more than welcome to those salaries for what they deal with.

True, however EMTs get paid less and see similar things, as do volunteer firemen earning $0 in my part of Pennsylvania. FWIW in most areas police are statistically less likely to die a violent death than the populace at large.

I think the difference is that, unlike EMTs and firemen, police officers need to be difficult to corrupt.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#72

Post by dotBen »

icey wrote: post #67
dotBen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the same with this guy, who looks like the highest paid officer (ie not chief/sergent/etc): http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/salary-details/?firstname=Wil... Base pay: $103,819.29, Overtime: $3,954.89, Other:$127,385.25 Total pay: $235,159.43 I'd love to know what OTHER includes. I'm guessing pension contribution but what else?

Is it possible that it OTHER reflects off-duty work? I know some cities allow their officers to work off-duty but in uniform, and the places that want to use them have to pay the city directly instead of the officer.

I would have thought that would be overtime, thus in a different column

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#74

Post by dotBen »

ojbyrne wrote: post #24
dotBen wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the same with this guy, who looks like the highest paid officer (ie not chief/sergent/etc): http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/salary-details/?firstname=Wil... Base pay: $103,819.29, Overtime: $3,954.89, Other:$127,385.25 Total pay: $235,159.43 I'd love to know what OTHER includes. I'm guessing pension contribution but what else?

The explanatory text says: "Gross pay includes overtime, bonuses, housing allowances, sick leave payout, vacation payout and multiple other forms of cash compensation" So "Other" would be everything but base pay and overtime. Admittedly "multiple other forms of cash compensation" leaves lots of possiblities.

Well that leaves "bonuses, housing allowances, sick leave payout, vacation payout"

Most of the time sick leave payout and vacation payout is no more than the same day rate of a 'working' individual.

Thus it is hard to know why the OTHER column is bigger than the base salary.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#75

Post by icey »

dotBen wrote: post #72
icey wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it possible that it OTHER reflects off-duty work? I know some cities allow their officers to work off-duty but in uniform, and the places that want to use them have to pay the city directly instead of the officer.

I would have thought that would be overtime, thus in a different column

Overtime is usually time spent on the clock while "on-duty" - i.e. still performing their regular police duties, but hours over their standard workweek. Whereas an off-duty officer might be patrolling a bowling alley parking lot or high school football game - still in uniform, but not on "official police business".

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#76

Post by tensafefrogs »

gunmetal wrote: post #17

How did all those CHP's get over a $100K raise from 2008-2009?

Maybe something like: the state has been poor so is cutting back on officers, so the ones left have to work tons of overtime to make up for it?

If that's the case, then what's the difference between paying crazy overtime vs. hiring more officers.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#77

Post by sfrench »

jister wrote: post #15

Isn't this sort of thing supposed to be confidential?

It "feels" wrong, but that's the way it's set up.

I used to work for UCOP (it's in the list), and about 5 years ago there was a big issue around "total compensation" for the high-level employees. That was the event that really sparked the level of transparency that you see in this database. Around that time, I recall my manager basically telling us that our salaries were all printed out in some book in Sacramento, and that people could look them up if they really wanted to. I guess the online database just makes it seem a bit too easy.

If you care more about the UCOP stuff google for "UCOP Compensation SFGate" you'll get plenty of info. Here are a couple links to get you started on what was going down:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/13/...

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/13/...

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#78

Post by rjett »

Something tells me that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of absurd California state spending. Check out the proposed budget for 2010-11 at http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/SummaryCharts.pd... . The Department of Business, Transportation, and Housing will spend $12.5 billion or 10.5% of the total budget. The CHP is included in this amount, spending around $2.5 billion. If CHP comprises such a small percentage of the total budget and yet their salaries are so out of whack with their peers in other states or the people of similar skill-sets in the private sector, surely there must be abuses/distortions in the other line items of the budget.

My last sentence is not necessarily a logical conclusion, but it makes me wonder how much of CA's budget crisis could be solved by normalizing expenditures with those of the 49 other states (which would probably entail pissing a lot of public employees off, fighting with some powerful unions, and cutting a few public works projects). I don't presume to know the answer, but once you give a mouse a cookie and a glass of milk and the mouse forms a union with all the other mice to get cookies and glasses of milk, and then the birds, bugs, and other critters form their unions to get similar deals, can you ever take the perks away and return things to their natural state?

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