Public employees not overpaid

For San Diego's North County Times

Ever since a handful of elected officials in a small town in Los Angeles County were caught helping themselves to astronomical salaries at taxpayer expense, the press has declared open season on public employees.

A recent example is an article appearing in this newspaper a couple of weeks ago ("Salaries up for county employees," Nov. 7). The lead-in claimed, "Base pay for some increased by 31 percent from 2007 to '09." This may have been an eye-catching introduction to a front page story, but it fell well short of the truth.

The increase was not in base pay. It was in the share of county employees earning more than $100,000 after nearly 600 temporary and student jobs had been eliminated. With 18,700 employees, a more accurate headline would be, "Ninety-five percent of county employees make less than $100K."

Here's a comparison of the county's public employee pay with the wages of workers in the total work force, as reported by the California Employment Development Department.

The average salary of the county's 2,700 chief executive officers is $201,000. That's .2 percent of the total work force. The 25 public employees who earn more than $200,000 a year represent .1 percent of the taxpayer-funded work force.

The county's chief administrative officer's base pay is $296,000. He's the CEO of an organization with a $5 billion budget that serves 3 million residents, exceeding the population of 20 states.

In comparison, the San Diego Business Journal reports the highest-paid banking executive in the county, PacWest CEO Matt Wagner, earned a base pay last year of $750,000, with a bonus of $562,000, for total compensation amounting to $1.5 million. The bank's total assets are $5.2 billion. By that measure, I'd say we're getting a bargain for our county's top leadership.

What about those other public employees earning at least $100,000?

The average salary of the county's 2,000 physicians and surgeons is $219,000. The highest-paid medical practitioner on the public payroll is a psychiatrist earning $216,000.

San Diego County's 6,000 attorneys earn an average of $145,000. Public defender attorneys have salaries ranging from $120,000 to $137,000.

This small sample, comparing the pay of jobs requiring specialized skills, education and training, suggests public employees are paid somewhat less than their private-sector counterparts.

There are 128,000 waiters, waitresses, janitors, maids, housekeepers, cashiers and retail salespersons in the private sector who earn annual pay ranging on average from $21,000 to $26,000. That's why the $37,000 median wage of the county's work force is well below the $60,000 average of the more highly skilled, trained and educated workers on the county payroll.

It's time to cool the rhetoric about overpaid public employees.