These salaries don’t even seem for real?
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I blame NCAA coaches for inflating the pay rates.
and a 93-year old college professor retired on a $561,754 pension .
Wow.
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Even if we adjust for cost of living, some of those salaries are ridiculous.
Cuomo took the wrong job
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Not surprising. There are many cities in California that filed for bankruptcy because they created over burdening pension plans in place in the late 40’s and early 50’s. This was the basis of local governments changing from pension systems to 401K type retirement systems. But the damage has already been done. It just will take awhile for other local governments to feel the pain.
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…and this mismanagement of taxpayer dollars exposed, is exactly why I’m against their bail out. It’s like giving crack, to crack addicts. I’m sorry governments, but it’s time to sober up.
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It looks like I found a new college degree program for a very lucrative career, Custodial Engineer:
“Only in New York can school janitors out-earn the principals. We found 40 “custodial engineers” who earned between $154,000 and $256,000, while 57 principals made less than $154,000.”
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In a lot of cases, bureaucrat jobs exist to enforce bureaucratic regulations.
It really need to start with eliminating counterproductive regulations, and then the oversight jobs can be eliminated entirely (and not just downsizing salaries.)
But yes, the report also shows that in this one little microcosm the salaries are inordinate. Consider that this is likely propagated from municipality to municipality, and from government level to government level.
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How much is overtime for many of them?
I’m a govt employee on a pension plan. My base salary was roughly 70,000 last year which is good for my area but its also 25 years into the payscale. A beginning person at my job would make 37,000. What I actually made was nearly $110,000 with all the excess being overtime.
Also 10% of my pay, regardless of whether its OT or not, is automatically withheld and put into the pension fund. To date since I started my career I’ve put nearly $250,000 into the pension fund.
Our pension fund is managed like a 401k so it grows well beyond what employees put into it.
Right now when I retire my expected pension payout is going to be between $5000 to $5500 a month (no health insurance provided as thats not an option for us). The exact amount is still uncertain as its dependent on a formula that considers your average salary during the highest paying 42 months of your career - thus most officers like me try to work as much overtime as possible near the end of their career to inflate that number. Since I started taking massive amounts of overtime I’ve brought up my monthly average nearly $800.
What has killed pensions in many places is that states / cities borrowed from the fund to pay current projects rather than invest it. Not the employees fault.
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Oregon. PERS. And more administrators than teachers. Like 3 to 1 or more. Most making six figures. No waste there. No siree.
I don’t know if your State is similar, but Oregon doesn’t even check if the funds are already allocated elsewhere before doling them out. Is there money in the general fund? Yes? Good to go. Then they wonder why they constantly have shortfalls despite having ridiculous taxes and a constant “surplus.” It’s written into the State Constitution that kicker checks are issued whenever revenues exceed the amount budgeted, which happens nearly every year like clockwork, yet they still never seem to have enough money. It’s completely retarded. Now they’re talking about implementing a sales tax in addition to their State income tax, lottery funds, the plethora of other taxes, as well as marijuana money. Never enough money for the schools although every election we keep getting told that’s where the majority of the money is going. (It really isn’t.)
I never looked into this specifically, but isn’t this all the result of crooked politicians back in the day of creating jobs for their buddies?
See this is the incorrect viewpoint (IMHO). The defined benefit plans were not “overburdened”, they were “underfunded” and the politicians knew it. Defined benefit plans are perfectly fine, but you have to fund it based on the science involved with actuary tables, not based on the political whims of who is in office.
Now, defined contribution plans do have the advantage that: (A) typically the funds are not controlled by politicians or shady employers, and (B) they are mobile and will go with you when you change jobs. (B) definitely being an advantage since socielty is more mobile and people change jobs much more often then under the traditional “pension” model.
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Not really, as the number of employees vastly outnumber the creation of jobs for buddies. Think in terms of a state, you have all the typical state employees (clerks, secretaries, state police, prision guards, teachers, etc., etc.) in the system.
It was more a problem because politicians defined the pension rate, but then didn’t budget for the pension fund.
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Could you give my a school system in Oregon, I’d like to validate that claim.
I work for a school system in Virginia, we have…
An Administrator rate of 1 to 10 teachers, including those in the school building and central office.
Administrators means those in supervisory position related to education. “Administrators” does not mean secretaries, teacher aids, IT people, HR, Payroll, Maintenance Trades (Plumbers, HVAC, Electrician, etc.), Bus Drivers, Food Service People).
So how does Oregon have 3 administrators to 1 teacher? Even when I include all the other jobs I still come up with a ration of 1 Teacher to 0.981001 Support Staff here.
(Ya, I’m the HR Data Guy.)
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Look up David Douglas in Portland. They converted almost the entire senior building to administration offices several years ago. And that’s just one school. Now it might be limited to just that district, but I’ve been hearing complaints on the radio about it for years and the Superintendent has caught heat over it repeatedly.
If you have time this summer, I suggest Coursera’s People Analytics course from Wharton.
It’s not a “Here’s how to use Workday/Tableau” course, but is instead a case-based approach. Plus Cade Massey, the main teacher, is one of the leaders in sports analytics and draws many of his examples from there.
It’s free, and you get to throw Wharton on your LinkedIn 
Thank you.
THey have 513 teachers and 37 Administrators. That 13.8 Teachers per 1 Administrator, not the 3 administrators to 1 teacher that was claimed.
If you add all the support people in you be 1 teacher with to 1.3 all support staff, still not the 3 teachers to 1 administrator. A little higher than out ratio, but we have outsourced some services (custodial, substitutes) which gives us a better ratio.
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I’m the database guy not the analytics guy.
I’m secure in my job for at least the next 5 years and after retirement I don’t need to worry about padding my resume’. LOL
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They still do it now. There just isn’t that many of them. I personally know one of them. The problem with that is once a new administration takes over you’re job is at risk. In his case, he lost it and got pushed down to toll collector.
Just curious about one thing in your link. Where are they getting those numbers? How are they coming up with them? I can’t speak for all of the jobs, but I do know that a Port Authority officer makes somewhere around 40-60 bucks an hour. Depending on how long they were there. That’s a far cry from the listed 400k+.
Anytime you see an article decrying govt employees with these huge salaries what they are actually doing is cherry picking one or two people who are extreme outliers and then acting like they are the norm. Maybe the police chief who obviously is going to make the most. Or maybe someone in a very specialized position who has raked in massive amounts of overtime.
A few years back my dept was in a huge staffing crunch so there was available overtime every single day of the week. Our schedule was built on a 12 hr shift which basically means you work 7 days out of 14. One of our officers in an attempt to pad his pension took available overtime every single day. He was also a field training officer for rookies so on his regular days so he got 2 hrs OT those days as well (due to the immense burden and responsibility of being a training officer most depts will compensate training officers in some fashion). By the end of the year he had actually made more in overtime than regular time due to the fact he still took his vacation days which were regular time. He was the highest paid employee in the city, making nearly $165,000 when his base would have been about 70,000) and it wasn’t even close despite the fact he made $20 an hr less than the police chief, the airport director, the electrical division director, and the mayor (the normally 4 highest paid positions).
