Was just given a job offer for an administrative role at a university (public university in Maryland.)
I’ve seen before that California university employees (and most if not all public employees in Texas) always have their name show up on Google search in some sort of database that lists their full name, job title and how much salary they earn.
I tend to be very attention-averse and don’t like people finding out where I’m working and how much I earn. I did Google the people who’d be working at the same Maryland public university as me and about half of them had their names show up while the other half didn’t.
Are these state-budget-transparency laws more or less the same in all 50 states, to let taxpayers know what their money is paying for? Do some states not have such sunshine laws?
The wiki on Freedom of information laws shows they exist in some form in every state. Details require a deeper dive. Names of public employees are probably available on request in every state, it’s not clear if they are readily accessible online or published in some form in every state. It may require filing something similar to a Freedom of Information Act request in some states.
I think it would be politically very difficult for states to conceal the names of their employees outside extraordinary circumstances. Possibly federal law may require public access to the information. I see some indications that is the case.
I don’t know about other states, but in my state employee salaries and pension amounts are public information. Some organization gets the info every year and maintains a database.
But I want to point out a couple of things - first, I’ve never seen it come up as a result of searching for a name ,only when using either a database or sometimes searching a name and the agency , which means that only people who know where you work are likely to find you. Second , even before these lists and databases became common someone who knew you fairly well could deduce your pay. For example , if you knew my job title, you could find out my pay grade. Once you knew that , you could get the salary range and if you knew how long I was in that title , you could figure out my salary almost exactly.
I am a state employee and my salary is also searchable by anyone who wants to know.
Exactly, I work for the State of Washington. There is a web site where I can look up the name of any state employee, including myself, and it says how much they make. That’s just one of the tradeoffs for working where I work. The money I make is based on the job role I have and how much that pays is decided by the legislature, though there are things like time served in the role that can allow it to vary from person to person a bit. Regardless, it’s open to anyone who wants to look it up.
It doesn’t bother me. If it did I wouldn’t work here.
In Colorado you need to file a CORA request, but that is just a formality. I knew a guy that would CORA request the salaries of his coworkers for negotiation when asking for a raise.
The Official Manual of The State of Missouri (known around these parts as the Blue Book) had the names, titles and salaries of every state employee listed even before Missouri enacted its sunshine laws back in the 1970s. You could get a copy from the state or in every local library.
I guess if I had thought about it, I woulda realized it was not just feds whose salaries were searchable. In the past, I’ve searched salaries of teachers and - I believe - municipal and county employees.
I work for a city government, and my salary is definitely searchable.
However I’ll offer one caveat, which is that whoever is making the databases isn’t doing such a great job- I have to dig a little bit to get my current job title and salary; most of them are stuck about 3 years ago.
Not in my state - anyone on a state/city/county payroll gets listed whether they are permanent , provisional , temporary or contingent. The only people who don’t get listed are people who don’t actually work for the state/city/coounty - for example, people who work for a non-profit organization who provide drug treatment in a prison or doctors who work in a public hospital but not for the hospital like when the hospital has a contract with a physician group to staff the ER.
Yes, county record at least here in Cook, are definitely searchable. I am able to find my cousin’s salary online and he works at the juvie as an IT guy.
Yeah, that’s possible. But I’d think a lot of folk outside DoD would have access to secret info, and not all in DoD would have such access. Of course, the govt does tend to paint with an overly broad brush whenever possible, and does tend to treat the military uniquely.
The information is public in all states. The information may not be online and searchable everywhere. Local newspapers tend to maintain databases if the state doesn’t, though.
