Richmond Times-Dispatch, for shame

The BBQ Pit
1

I will not post the article because it contains a link to a god-awful database.

Want to know what your next-door-neighbor, the one who works for a state agency, makes? Just put in his name and it’s served to you on a platter. All the fodder you need to either make fun of him, be jealous of him, or rob his rich ass is right there at your fingertips.

The newspaper has compiled a database of every state employee, with job title, base salary, and salary+benefits. Their logic was, it’s public information anyway. Why not put it all together and let the masses see for themselves where there tax money is going?

But it’s bullshit. If people are worried about their money being wasted, why not actually take the raw data and process it in a way that actually tells you something. Knowing that John Smith makes $50,000 a year as an environmental scientist tells you NOTHING about how long John Smith has been working with the agency, his credentials, his job duties, where he works (Northern VA employees have a higher salary range than the rest of us), or anything else worthwhile. It just tells you how much money goes into his bank account every month.

Knowing that Suzy Q. in the cubicle next to yours makes two thousand dollars more than you also doesn’t help morale much. All day, my coworkers were putting the names of colleagues into the database. You could hear them say things like “John makes more than James? Wow!” How in the hell does that shit benefit the Commonwealth of Virginia?

Of course, the Richmond Times-Dispatch said it was trying to reveal information about the state to expose any over-salaried staff members such as was found in Bell, CA. Their verdict was that, no, we don’t have that going on. Fine. So why not leave it at that? Why go on to reveal what should be private information? Or just post a salary with job position number–something only a busybody would bother attaching a name to.

You should read the comments left by many of the readers, talking about how overpaid VA state employees are. Listen, you jerks. We haven’t gotten raises or bonuses or cost-of-living adjustments in 3 years. We get paid less than our private sector counterparts, and work just as hard if not harder than they do. We can’t surf the web, we have to ask for permission to work second jobs, and we don’t even get paid for lunch breaks. And my agency’s getting crapped on left and right because we’re seen by everyone as “anti-business”. My name doesn’t show up in the damned database because I don’t even make enough money. And now my coworkers, the ones who are in the database, can find that out. I don’t care if they know I’m not in the millionares club, but it still doesn’t make it right.

If I were someone making six figures (like my boss’s boss…which I found out today whatdoyouknow) and suddenly had my house broken into, I would immediately blame that stupid database.

Dumb-ass newspaper. Hope whoever came up with this bright idea feels good about themselves.

2

They stole that from New York. The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research has SeethroughNY, which has a database of all state and local employee salaries, as well as copies of labor and vendor contracts

3

Fact of life in CA as well, the last few years. I’m not particularly happy about it, but it is what it is these days.

4

I’ve heard that you can call the phone company and they’ll send you a huge book listing the names and phone numbers of everyone in your area code! THAT’S FUCKED UP, MAAAAAAAN.
Srsly, public employees’ compensation is public record. They know this. And I guarantee every one of them has looked up exactly how much their boss and colleagues make, so why shouldn’t you? Big deal.

5

BTW, here’s the link to the eeeeeevil database.

The Dean of the UVA medical school makes a cool $700 grand base salary.

6

Because it’s not private information. By law public agencies must disclose their employees compensation. The end.

7

I’m sorry. I can’t comprehend your last paragram. Who is “they”? Are you referring to state employees? Perhaps it wasn’t clear, but I am one of these employees. And no, none of us (at least in my department) have snooped into our boss’s records to see how much money he makes. It never crossed our mind to do so until today. I know because we were all dumbfounded as we clustered around the computer and discovered the information revealed by that database.

Why would anyone need to see how much money I make? What business is it how horrible my salary is, unless they plan to give me some more money?

Let’s say you come across a rude employee at the DMV and happen to catch their name. You look up their salary and you see they get paid $54,000. Are you going to write a stern letter to someone, complaining that they’re overpaid? What would you be basing that on? You have no idea how long they’ve been working for the agency, what their job duties entail, what their credentials are, or any other factors that go into the salary equation. And if theit name doesn’t pop up in the database (such as mine), what will you do then? Be all puffy and satisfied because you probably make more money than they do?

It provides no useful information to the public. Give me a graph showing median pay band salaries divided by years of service, and perhaps that will say something about people being overpaid. As it stands now, it’s just a place for Nelson Muntz to go “Ha ha!”

8

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has the same information available for Missouri state employees. I haven’t looked–can’t say I care. My experience indicates that state employees have worse working conditions and lower pay than private sector employees in the same job, and make it up with job security and benefits.

9

Hey just the thing to let a crazed anyone get a head start on stalking someone else!

10

Yes.

So did you look at it or not? Sounds like you did.

It’s a check. And like most checks on government power and abuse, it rarely matters in the individual case. We make government expenditures public because the people want to know how their tax money is being spent. If some crotchety old guy wants to write a letter to the editor about how much a DMV clerk makes, why shouldn’t he? How is his concern any more or less valid than someone complaining about an expensive weapons system contract? Who gets to draw the line? Is it the amount of people involved, the amount of money, or what? And how many bureaucrats does it take to determine which expenses are public and which are nobody’s business?

BTW, if you and your colleagues really had no idea that your compensation was a matter of public record, you have succeeded in living up to the public perception of the competence of government employees.

11

And if you don’t see the difference between a FOIA request of an employee’s full profile and an internet database providing information about salary and pretty much nothing else, then you’re living up to my perception that you’re a complete idiot.

12

What’s the moral difference between snail-mailing a FOIA request and digitally transmitting an HTTP query? The response time?

13

Just popped in to say that we have this in Texas too. I’m a doctoral student, and my salary is posted.

14

  1. Usually people don’t do a massive FOIA request of every state employee they know like they can searching an internet database.

  2. Although FOIA’s can be anonymous, they generally are not.

  3. Usually FOIA’s aren’t done out of idle curiosity, but for a specific reason since they are filtered through bureaucracy. And because of this and the fact that some employees have contacts in special places, they might actually find out that someone has FOIA’ed them.

  4. Most people aren’t going to write their state’s department of HR and say, “I want to know John Smith’s salary and nothing else.” They will generally get an employee profile, containing the context behind John Smith’s salary, so that they actually can make an informed opinion instead of a ridiculous one.

So yes, there is a difference between FOIA and a very simplistic database. I am a public servant, yes, and I am well aware of all the hassles that come with that. But posting my salary on the internet doesn’t serve anyone. It just gives idiotic people more reason to shit on state employees even more than they already do.

15

Obama said this in Jan '09 regarding tranparency in government:

“The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears (bolding mine),” Obama said in the FOIA memo, adding later that “In responding to requests under the FOIA, executive branch agencies (agencies) should act promptly and in a spirit of cooperation, recognizing that such agencies are servants of the public.”

His memo on government transparency states that the Obama Administration “will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.”

But of course this spirit of transparency doesn’t apply to you. We know what Obama makes, why can’t we know what you make?

16

Welcome to government life. In my state it’s if you make 50 grand or more, which meant that when I checked on my boss when I worked at a university library I found out that a man who had worked there so long his parking sticker was a SINGLE DIGIT NUMBER and who was the best business librarian I have ever met was the lowest earning employee to make the cut. Recently, they FOIAed the county librarians, which is kind of dirty since we don’t actually work for the county, we just get money from them. But it hardly matters, since nobody who’s a decent human being in the library system qualifies for the $50,000 mark. Obviously including me. But I did find out that the IT guy who completely inappropriately screamed to the whole floor of patrons that he wouldn’t be speaking to me thenceforth because I advocated for my patrons and demanded answers from him makes a good $75,000. And I never got an apology. And he doesn’t even fix the damned computers when they fuck up.

17

I don’t know anything about the rest of this stuff, but I did wonder about the lunch breaks. I’ve never been paid for those - does anyone? I mean, other than government workers?

18

Well, obviously government workers don’t…since I AM A GOVERNMENT WORKER.

The hateration of the government and the citizens that just happen to work for it is rearing its ugly head in this thread.

Get this: we are regular people. Just like you. We aren’t politicians or political appointees. We’re accountants, scientists, secretaries, inspectors, and other cubicle rats who just filled out an application and happened to get a job. I have no problem with FOIA. If you have an interaction with someone who pisses you off…or you stumble across a government worker who seems to be up to no-good, then yeah, go ahead and FOIA their ass all the way to the moon. But why should my salary be exposed to greedy, idiotic, government-phobic eyes? If you’re going to go tsk tsk tsk at the big wigs who make over $100,000, then you should be equally pissed off that the government employs thousands of hard-working, highly credentialed people and pays them below $50,000, below their private-sector “worth”. But of course none of the RDT readers, except for fellow state employees, talk about that.

Oh. I forgot. The database doesn’t show credentials or anything else that’s useful. Which makes it no different than a dirty bathroom wall.

I repeat: there are much better ways to present this information, like by actually doing some data analysis and not giving names. Maybe RTD doesn’t have a good data analyst on their staff. They should give someone a job and hire one.

19

This shows one reason I decided long ago to never be a government employee. Whatever I do at work, good or bad, and whatever salary I earn, high or low – I want to be judged by people who are in a position to know what my job really is, and what I’m really expected to do. My manager, and my company. Not by some random taxpayer who think he knows what I should be doing, and how much I should be paid, because “I pay your salary.”

20

I think it is a good idea.