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California Highway Patrol salaries

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Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#31

Post by anthonyb »

mikerhoads wrote: post #2

Interesting. I dug down into one of the actual officers close to the last page. In 2008 he made a total of $156,703.56 and it breaks down like this - Base pay: $75,782.22, Overtime: $2,572.98, Other:$78,348.3 Does anyone have an idea what they mean by "other"? http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/salary-details/?firstname=Gra...

Two things that I can think of. Either it's retiring officers cashing out unspent holiday time, or else being injured and getting compensation. eg. This guy:

http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/salary-details/?firstname=Mic...

has only a 70k base pay for 2009 (1/2 pay), and a 200k other, compared to the two other years.

If you look a few pages down the list, you'll get more 'normal' salaries, like this one:

http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/salary-details/?firstname=Jer...

Which is still pretty astronomical, but then he is doing a lot of overtime...

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#33

Post by oiuytrdrfghj »

folz wrote: post #5

It'd be interesting to get comment from the highway patrol about what the "other" category is. Looking at the individual officers per-year, "other" was around $4,000 in 2007 and 2008, but jumped to about $140,000 in 2009. Kind of makes me want to become a California Highway Patrolman.

You know a cynical person could suspect that the state wanted to claim that it was freezing or cutting public salaries - while paying the police a lot more!

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#34

Post by wildmXranat »

Here in Toronto, Canada, we had a subway toll booth collector earn somewhere about 140K. When the top public jobs salary list was published, his earnings stood out like an eyesore. There was plenty of hub-bub about it, but it eventually went away.

That report doesn't take the cake though. This year, our province of Ontario instituted a new tax called HST. Tax collectors that were previously hired by the province would get transferred as federal employees that would be reporting to the federal government. Guess what ? Instead of getting a plain job transfer, they got job severance payments upwards of $45K and all they had to do is show up at another government building on Monday morning. When it comes to tax payer's money, there is no logic applied during contract negotiation. It's cowardly politicians and greedy unions.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#35

Post by waterlesscloud »

SamAtt wrote: post #23
modeless wrote: post #6

Wow this is weird, I went to elementary school with one of these guys and now I can look up his salary on the Internet. His 2009 pay is more than my base salary this year at Google, though I will probably make more with my bonus. However, he's on a very steep upward trend so his 2010 pay will probably be more than mine again. I don't think I'd trade jobs, though, police work isn't for me. (Edit: also just noticed tha…

I wouldn't trade jobs with a CHP officer either but I do have to wonder about the skill level. I'm sure it's harder than I think but the job still boils down to parking on the side of the freeway, spotting violators, chasing them for about a minute and then writing them a ticket. Is that really worth $48+ an hour? Because that seems to be around the average pay (The CHP has a very powerful union so their base pay hou…

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.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#36

Post by natrius »

rottencupcakes wrote: post #8

While I understand how voters often want "public accountability" and itemized breakdowns of state budget, something like this seems like a mistake. There was another thread on the front page earlier today about why companies keep salaries very private. There are reasons why private companies do that. Forcing a government institution to publish these like this must make for interesting inter office politics.

I disagree (but I don't think your comment is worthy of downvotes). For instance, you and your hypothetical school-age children know the most about relative teacher quality within their schools outside of the schools themselves. Presumably, relative quality should be proportional to relative pay. Many people call asking us[1] to list only positions and salaries and leave the names out, but without having the names of employees, there's no way for you to see how effectively your tax dollars are getting spent in the ways that affect you the most. The only real harm done is to the ability of the government to underpay people. There's also the embarrassment some people feel when their friends and family find out their salary, but given a job title, you can guess someone's salary with sufficient accuracy.

Tools like this allow citizens to find out if exceptional employees receive relatively exceptional pay, and if certain positions are over- or underpaid in general. There is actual virtue in these tools, though admittedly most of our hits probably come from the salaciousness factor.

[1] http://www.texastribune.org/library/data/government-employee...

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#37

Post by danteembermage »

rm-rf wrote: post #12
rottencupcakes wrote: post #8

While I understand how voters often want "public accountability" and itemized breakdowns of state budget, something like this seems like a mistake. There was another thread on the front page earlier today about why companies keep salaries very private. There are reasons why private companies do that. Forcing a government institution to publish these like this must make for interesting inter office politics.

My salary is in a database just like this at a newspaper in another state. Big deal. I am a public employee. The public can, does and should know my salary. If they don't think I'm worth it, they (the public) should fire me.

Are you a finance academic? (username + public employee)

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#38

Post by natrius »

folz wrote: post #18
jister wrote: post #15

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

No. The Freedom of Information Act ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_information_act ) allows anyone to request the salaries of government officials. Usually this means that newspapers request the salaries for all government officials and put it in a public database. My local newspaper does the same thing ( http://datacenter.courier-journal.com/government/salaries/in... ), and I presume yours does too, provid…

FOIA is only for federal information. Most states have some sort of equivalent, but the restrictions on what information is released varies.

Re: California Highway Patrol salaries

#40

Post by Elcho »

SamAtt wrote: post #23
modeless wrote: post #6

Wow this is weird, I went to elementary school with one of these guys and now I can look up his salary on the Internet. His 2009 pay is more than my base salary this year at Google, though I will probably make more with my bonus. However, he's on a very steep upward trend so his 2010 pay will probably be more than mine again. I don't think I'd trade jobs, though, police work isn't for me. (Edit: also just noticed tha…

I wouldn't trade jobs with a CHP officer either but I do have to wonder about the skill level. I'm sure it's harder than I think but the job still boils down to parking on the side of the freeway, spotting violators, chasing them for about a minute and then writing them a ticket. Is that really worth $48+ an hour? Because that seems to be around the average pay (The CHP has a very powerful union so their base pay hou…

It obviously can be dangerous at times but considering how many people want to be police officers this pay level seems corrupt.

This is just anecdotal but I've met far more people who want to be police officers / fireman than engineers or doctors; surely there is a large supply of eligible candidates, I can't believe that there is any shortage of capable labor to justify this almost CEO level of pay.

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