California Highway Patrol salaries | Hacker News Reader

California Highway Patrol salaries

sacbee.com

149 pointsgeorgecmu169 comments

It's funny, one thing led to another earlier today and we found ourselves looking at the salaries for county workers in our area. Most of our county positions -- down to the road workers and clerical staff -- make more than I ever have.

I'm struggling every month, growing a business, working a ton of hours, and these goons are drawing at least $50/month from every taxpayer in our county.

I had to go outside and play for a while after that. It was extremely demoralizing. Coming back and seeing this didn't help.

And you should see how slowly they move when they do move.

Some city workers were behind my condo complex reinforcing the levee. Took 2 vehicles and employees to spread stones out. One truck for 2 to take a perpetual break and the other to occasionally spread some stones around to look busy. I guarantee you a private levee gets fixed in 1/10 the time and for 1/20 the cost.

oops. that should read "2 vehicles and 3 employees".

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.

It is difficult to resist the conclusion that unions exercise total capture of the Californian budgetmaking process. (100% payraises in the face of the financial collapse? For line officers? In only two years? After they're the best paid in the nation? Before you consider the pensions?!)

These guys are getting a lot of overtime in their last year so they can jack up their pensions. Some fools in Sacramento agreed to just consider the LAST year of work when calculating their pensions.

Obviously, Californians are being taken for a ride. By the union, by whoever is approving the overtime (probably another union member), by the legislative majority and whichever governor signed this very bad deal for taxpayers into law.

This happens everywhere. The Toronto Transit Commission does the best 4 years of your last 5 or something like that. I knew two people that worked there until they retired. The first was a "field clerk" (basically a secretary for a construction site) the other was a construction inspector.

They both paid the same percent into the pension yet despite salary differences of $35k vs $85k they both took home the same amount from the pension fund because the field clerk managed to get promoted to construction inspector for the last 4 years of her 35 year career there. I tried to show them how stupid this system is using Excel spreadsheets and how either the lifelong construction inspector is getting screwed or the taxpayer who backstops the pension is getting screwed but they wouldn't hear it. Whenever someone complains about their defined benefits public pension cutting their payments I just roll my eyes because it seems like these people don't want to care about how things work, they pretend that there is a magical piggy bank with endless money.

The worst part is that the construction inspector got bored at home so he eventually came back through an engineering firm as a "consultant" doing the same job he did before, but pulling both a salary and a pension now. Madness.

"they pretend that there is a magical piggy bank with endless money."

Found it for you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China

Ireland also has a 'pension is based on last year's salary' for many public sector workers.

Popular wisdom in California is that the budget problem is happening because it's too hard to raise taxes.

Bunk. Spending doubled in Cali between 1996 and 2006, up $100 billion.

I read somewhere that when Prop 13 passed, revenue from property taxes was $5 billion and now its over $40 billion.

The real problem is that our interests are not represented in Sacramento.

"I read somewhere that when Prop 13 passed, revenue from property taxes was $5 billion and now its over $40 billion"

So? Prop 13 passed in 1978. How much has the value of the property increased in that time? Have property tax revenues even kept up with inflation?

There is also more property being taxed than in the '70s. My father loves to drive around California and point out all the homes and businesses that weren't around when he lived here in the mid-'70s.

I mention that because it disproves that Prop 13 caused a decline in revenue. Instead, there was a 700% increase.

Prop 13 actually made it more attractive to buy property, which caused its value to go up and more housing to be created and taxed.

The same thing happened in Boston in the 1980's. Property taxes were slashed and then values doubled in within a decade.

The same thing always happens when you stop taxing something to death. It recovers, grows, flourishes.

There is no amount of tax revenue that politicians can't spend (and if they can borrow, use as leverage for more borrowing).

There's a thesis expressed in this recent book (look for discussions of it) http://www.amazon.com/Never-Enough-Americas-Limitless-Welfar... that a or the fatal flaw (my term) of liberalism is that it has no limiting principle. I find it very hard to look at California and not agree.

No, popular wisdom in California is that we have the most inept legislature in the country and the unions are actually running the place. California doesn't appear to have any problem raising taxes.

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 that his pay includes quite a bit of overtime...)

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 hours are capped at an average 40 per week). I'm not for big cuts but cut $20,000 a year off each salary and they're still making $80,000 a year which is pretty respectable

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.

True, however EMTs get paid less and see similar things, as do volunteer firemen earning $0 in my part of Pennsylvania.

FWIW in most areas police are statistically less likely to die a violent death than the populace at large.

To be fair, police have to deal with a wider range of psychological issues than jobs in rescue. Not only are police exposed to most things that rescue jobs are exposed to, they also have to deal with domestic violence, hostage situations, exploitation of minors and other disadvantaged groups, threats from organized crime, and sometimes actually pulling the trigger themselves. Hell, just the fact that police officers have to enforce laws they might not personally agree with is a pretty big emotional strain. My naive intuition is that rescue jobs are far less in a grey area emotionally.

I'm not saying this to quibble about whose job is more important or serious. It's just that I would volunteer as a firefighter or an EMT in a second, but I would have to think very carefully about how working in law enforcement would affect me.

>police have to deal with a wider range of psychological issues

Not nearly as much as those serving in the military whose salary is vastly less (closer to the population median income).

True, but is that a problem with police salaries, or with military ones? I have a number of acquaintances in the military, many of whom have served multiple tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as a taxpayer and (putative) beneficiary of their service, I'm personally embarrassed by how little they get paid.

They get the population median income. Without having to have acquired any skills before joining, all training and living costs are paid for after enlistement. Base pay is still far higher than minimum wage work. I'd say the problem in this specific context is undeniably CHP salaries being artificially super inflated above the national median income in a market inefficient manner that does not reflect supply of people capable of performing the work.

  > FWIW in most areas police are statistically less
  > likely to die a violent death than the populace at large.

[Citation Needed]

Here is one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police_officer#Occupational_haz...

quote: "Despite perceived dangers, policing has never been listed among the top ten most dangerous jobs in America. In terms of deaths per capita, driver-sales work such as pizza delivery is a more dangerous profession than being a police officer." (see reference in footnote)

Edit: I did say "less than the populace at large" ; will try to find a specific link to back this up, not just one that shows being a police officer is not as dangerous as other jobs.

I think the difference is that, unlike EMTs and firemen, police officers need to be difficult to corrupt.

If NJ is any indication, higher salaries do nothing to prevent police corruption.

> Who knows who that driver is and what they're going to do?

They're in much greater danger of being killed in an ordinary car accident than by a driver with murderous intent.

Standing on the side of the road next to a pulled-over car is a known way to get yourself hit by another car.

Pay is not determined by the difficulty or unpleasantness of the job, or at least, not directly. It is determined by the balance of supply and demand. How many people are ready and willing to be police officers at some level of pay, and how many police officers are needed?

Policing isn't trivial, but you know what? Neither are most other jobs. There are many, many people with the capability of being police officers; supply is high. Demand is not actually all that high compared to supply. There's even more supply than may initially meet the eye because many people not physically strong enough to be police officers right this instant could bring themselves up to spec if needed. The difficulty or unpleasantness of the job factors into the supply but I think you'd find a lot of people who would take that job; it's hard, but there's a lot of hard jobs about that people do for much less than that amount of money. (After all, first responding is hard from one point of view, but it is uniquely rewarding too; how many lives have you saved in the course of your work? It's not all good but it's not all bad either.)

You argue that they are valuable, and this is true, but the value of an employee is not what determines their pay... it is what caps it; long term, anyhow. You can't be paid more than what you are worth, you can't even be paid exactly what you are worth, you in fact inevitably must be paid less than what you are "worth" for the whole arrangement to work. Governments aren't immune to this. They must run at a net profit or they'll bring their society down. Measurement of profit is somewhat different than a private company, but profit they must; they must be extracting more value from their employees than they are paying their employees or the society is running the government at a net loss, which can only be tolerated to a finite degree as determined by what other surpluses the society is running elsewhere. What governments can do that private industry can't is put off the pain until much later before the fact they are paying people more than the value they are actually bringing bites them.

Later's pretty much here, by the way.

I don't think this pay is rooted in the laws of economics. The number of people applying for police officer jobs is huge - but that doesn't mean the pay gets lowered for anyone. The contracts are negotiated by the veterans in the force, and the people with criminal justice degrees waiting in the wings who would gladly take less money are not stake holders in contract negotiations.

Absolutely, that's my point. Just because they are valuable doesn't mean they should actually get paid according to their "value".

Nothing stops people from being paid more than they are worth. Doctors in the US are a classic example of an industry that captures regulations which enables them to artificially limit supply and over charge for their services.

Pay is not determined by the difficulty or unpleasantness of the job, or at least, not directly. It is determined by the balance of supply and demand.

That's true, but the market is ridiculously deformed on both sides of that equation. On the supply side, there are many who would like to be cops but the requirements bar them entry (most often for legitimate reasons, but I suspect not always). On the demand side, America's constant quest for new crimes to be defined and new police powers creates an artificial demand. I mean, most people I know don't see a demand for policing those smoking marijuana, but legislation forces it.

You can't be paid more than what you are worth

That depends on the definition of "worth". If you determine it rigorously as an economist would -- how much less money would the organization make without this employee -- then you're right. But if you define it in terms of the employee's productive contribution, it's a different story. Again, regulations cause some of that different (the need to have a figurehead owner who is a state resident, in some jurisdictions, is just deadweight but a requirement for doing business); in other cases it's contractual obligations (i.e., to be certified to sell some Cisco product you must have on staff one Cisco-certified engineer, even though you're not using his services as such).

I think you misunderstood when I said you can't be paid more than you are worth; I don't mean that you can't overpay someone, ever, I'm saying that nobody, government or otherwise, can persistently over the long haul pay its employees more than they are worth. I'd say any definition of "value" or "worth" that does permit that is so broken as to be useless. It's simply impossible; a system simply can not have more value flowing out of it than the sum total of the value it generates, the value it takes in, and the value it has on hand, and imbalances in income vs. outflow tend to be able to rapidly deplete the stored value.

That the market is "ridiculously deformed" here is sort of my point, along with the fact that such deformations can not be sustained.

It is determined by the balance of supply and demand

That's not actually true - here in the UK they are turning away applicants for the Met, even cancelling start dates. The supply of police officers far outstrips the demand. The same is true of the fire brigade.

http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2010/06/10/55913/met-...

    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?

According to Wolfram Alpha, 633,000 people are employed as police officers. From the Office Down Memorial Page, I found that 127 officers died in the line of duty in the United States in 2009. This gives us a death rate of 20 per 100,000. Of those 127 deaths, 60 were classified as the result of gunfire, during pursuit, or as the result of an assault. If we're generous and treat all of these incidents as homicides, we get a homicide rate of 9.5 per 100,000.

The 2008 murder rate in Detroit was 40.6 per 100,000. East St. Louis, 101.9 per 100,000! The murder rate across the entire United States at the same time was 5.4 per 100,000. The death rate of fishermen is 112 per 100,000.

We could dig into the numbers more and look at where these officers were killed and get an adjusted risk of homicide for police. Anyway, here's my point: The actual threat posed to police is small compared to the public perception of a threat.

By that concept, army infantry should be some of the highest paid people out there. A rather dangerous job in many of the places we deploy. Yet, their pay is nowhere near this level.

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.

It's not to do with shortage of labor. Their salaries are high because being a cop is a life-threatening and potentially psychologically damaging profession. Some go their entire careers unscathed, some get killed, almost all have close calls every now and then. Most of them have families that care about them and know the sacrifice they might have to make one day. They deserve good salaries for their service.

Believe you me, I have many gripes about the quality (or lack thereof) of law enforcement in this country. But how much they are paid isn't one of them.

When I see news reports about IEDs on California highways I will support you wholeheartedly. Until then, I think they're way overpaid in relation to the armed forces.

Are there any numbers on that? Sure, there are lots of people who want to be police officers, but that's not the same as being qualified. As far as I can find, unemployment rates among officers are extremely low, there are many unfilled positions, and officers who moved have little difficulty finding new jobs. That all usually indicates a tight labor market.

It's possible police academy is unnecessarily hard or something, but I suppose you could say that in any field (perhaps Google's hiring standards are too high, or med school is too hard).

Entry level police positions are typically very competitive. In some jurisdictions (in my area in NJ specifically), you simply cannot get hired without having connections to existing or retired officers. Getting fired is virtually unheard of. Local Colleges are filled with criminal justice majors will who never make it to an academy. The benefits, pay, power, and perks make it the ultimate job, if you can get it.

"... 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? ..."

Non verbals, body language, dealing with highly charged emotional people - all these skills aren't readily acknowledged but required to police effectively.

dealing with highly charged emotional people

Sometimes I wish we could just delete extremely violent emotion from the genetic code. People living their lives rationally as well as emotionally would make for a much better world.

no love without hate, though....

Actually, the skill level is fairly high. The CHP academy is around 7 months long. Training is similar to boot camp. They train physically, high speed and safe driving techniques, weapons training, and of course they have to learn the vehicle code (it's a LOT bigger than you might think), and how to write reports. Getting into the academy is fairly difficult, and many cadets washout before finishing.

There are so many laws about what police can and cannot do and how they have to do things, that it's actually quite complicated and has a steep learning curve. They also work long hours (12 hour shifts).

I'm a bit biased since I have brothers in the CHP, but it's definitely a tough job.

>Training is similar to boot camp

I somehow doubt it's harder than real boot camp in the marines, and their base pay is at least 5 times less!

True, though not sure about California, in my home state pretty much all state troopers are ex-military anyway so it doesn't matter.

Why would it not matter?

I don't understand why troopers being ex-military has any relevance to the issue.

If the already went through military bootcamp, CHP bootcamp would be a breeze.

The poster's point was that having a tough boot camp does not justify the highway police salaries, since marines do a similar camp and earn a lot less. Thus saying that CHP bootcamp is a breeze for ex-military does not make that argument not matter, it reinforces it.

Not to mention that for all the "elite this" and "chosen that," infantry training is designed exactly for the average man.

I pulled my first pay stub from the Marines (2001-2005). $350 bi-weekly after taxes. 4-years/4-promotions later, I was sitting around $650 bi-weekly when I left to head to college.

We're both trained for completely different purposes. Without a doubt, sending a CHP officer into Marine Corps boot camp would be quite the whirl wind for the guy/gal.

> of course they have to learn the vehicle code

Of course this is the code that the law presumes that every driver knows. It would be unfair to punish someone for doing what they didn't know is illegal.

I guess there's a subset of legal behaviour that easy to describe and remember. It's just when you are pushing the limits that the edges get fuzzy.

Also each driver only has to know the vehicle code as it pertains to them. E.g. if you are not a lorry driver, you don't care about lorry rules.

I have no doubt the training is difficult and perhaps it is a tough field to break into, but neither of those facts can justify near 100% pay increases over 2 years.

They are very obviously gaming the system in their last year before retirement to award themselves unreasonable large pensions.

If you check the base salary, the year-over-year increase was between 4% and 7%, which is more than I get for a yearly raise, but not entirely unreasonable. Don't forget that the "Other" category is most benefits that aren't necessary paid out as real dollars to the employee, though it could be paid-out vacation time saved up over many years.

Do so many highway stops involve those skills that all officers must have them? Seems like highways should have a "parking enforcer" level instead/too sometimes.

If you work at Google then you might not be eligible. A lot of police departments have a maximum IQ cap that would rule out most Google employees.

Links to validate this claim? This seems crazy to me.

I don't know if there are any hard statistics on how common this is, but here is a link to the NYT article describing the court ruling:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A06E2DB143DF...

Not so much an 'IQ cap' but they don't want to hire people who will leave soon for better jobs.

Something tells me that this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of absurd California state spending. Check out the proposed budget for 2010-11 at http://www.ebudget.ca.gov/pdf/BudgetSummary/SummaryCharts.pd... . The Department of Business, Transportation, and Housing will spend $12.5 billion or 10.5% of the total budget. The CHP is included in this amount, spending around $2.5 billion. If CHP comprises such a small percentage of the total budget and yet their salaries are so out of whack with their peers in other states or the people of similar skill-sets in the private sector, surely there must be abuses/distortions in the other line items of the budget.

My last sentence is not necessarily a logical conclusion, but it makes me wonder how much of CA's budget crisis could be solved by normalizing expenditures with those of the 49 other states (which would probably entail pissing a lot of public employees off, fighting with some powerful unions, and cutting a few public works projects). I don't presume to know the answer, but once you give a mouse a cookie and a glass of milk and the mouse forms a union with all the other mice to get cookies and glasses of milk, and then the birds, bugs, and other critters form their unions to get similar deals, can you ever take the perks away and return things to their natural state?

Don't forget that Arnold has said the biggest problem with the budget is the state workers unions, like the teachers unions. They are under CONTRACT and cannot change those expenditures at will.

It's weird. No offense but BART janitor makes 80K. Someone I know is a chemical research scientist, with advanced degree is making 70K. Now we are talking about cutting education budget, some schools are loosing non mainstream course work all together.

This is absurd there is gotta be some solution.

We can change the people who blindly approved such deals.

The injury and fatality rate among police and fire employees is far below that of many other jobs like fisherman, lumberjack jobs, and basic construction work. A private in the army making 30k year will see horrendous things and experience immense stress deployed in combat. Whereas I imagine most cops will never fire their guns out on the street over the course of their entire career.

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...

The sum of Base & Overtime is $78,355.20... which is really close to Other. I don't know why the total is the sum, though.

And the same with this guy, who looks like the highest paid officer (ie not chief/sergent/etc):

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

Base pay: $103,819.29, Overtime: $3,954.89, Other:$127,385.25

Total pay: $235,159.43

I'd love to know what OTHER includes. I'm guessing pension contribution but what else?

I wonder if it would include something like injury compensation / some law enforcement-specific hazard pay... seems like it'd fit these large payouts.

The explanatory text says: "Gross pay includes overtime, bonuses, housing allowances, sick leave payout, vacation payout and multiple other forms of cash compensation"

So "Other" would be everything but base pay and overtime. Admittedly "multiple other forms of cash compensation" leaves lots of possiblities.

Well that leaves "bonuses, housing allowances, sick leave payout, vacation payout"

Most of the time sick leave payout and vacation payout is no more than the same day rate of a 'working' individual.

Thus it is hard to know why the OTHER column is bigger than the base salary.

Many government jobs allow you to accrue vacation and sick time without limit. If you're retiring and cash out 30 years of unused sick leave, that's a big lump payment.

Is it possible that it OTHER reflects off-duty work? I know some cities allow their officers to work off-duty but in uniform, and the places that want to use them have to pay the city directly instead of the officer.

I would have thought that would be overtime, thus in a different column

Overtime is usually time spent on the clock while "on-duty" - i.e. still performing their regular police duties, but hours over their standard workweek. Whereas an off-duty officer might be patrolling a bowling alley parking lot or high school football game - still in uniform, but not on "official police business".

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...

I see an exciting future in journalism that consists of building tools to help users navigate and manipulate data.

Is this already a YC startup? I think that better data visualization tools would help reduce the hold journalists have on peoples' perceptions of the world. Journalists would interpret data more and tell people what to think less.

http://ycombinator.com/rfs1.html

Swivel tried, and it died:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1786982

How is interpreting data for people different from telling them what to think?

Google Spreadsheet?

How did all those CHP's get over a $100K raise from 2008-2009?

Maybe something like: the state has been poor so is cutting back on officers, so the ones left have to work tons of overtime to make up for it?

If that's the case, then what's the difference between paying crazy overtime vs. hiring more officers.

I have two brothers that are in the Highway Patrol. Both are listed in the database. I'm pretty surprised to see the size of the increase in base pay from year to year. In their two listings, the Other category was negligible.

I'm not sure what the Other category is, but it could be a calculation of the extra benefits they get that isn't paid directly to them. For example, it may be accrued time off that they save up for years (rollover) and then cash out. Maybe I'll ask my brothers if they have any idea.

Here's what my brother suggested is in the Other category:

Other= overtime, cozeep (caltrans construction overtime), mazeep (caltrans maintenance overtime), compensation time off, education incentives, motorcycle pay, bilingual, flight officer, management, etc.

Did anyone tried last page? ==== PUBLIC SAFETY DISPATCHER, CALIFORNIA HIGHWAY PATRO 2007: $0.00 2008: $80,814.55 2009: -$80,814.55 ====

What does negative salary mean?

Hopefully they refunded the state their salary, realizing how excessive and improper it was. A guy can dream, right?

Wait until the pensions kick in.

And they can up their pension by working lots and lots of OT, this is known as "spiking." Nice. Another reason I wouldn't want to live in CA.

OMG, why are these salaries so high? What's considered entry level for CHIPS? How much is that salary?

Is this type of pay typical nationwide? I've been looking to get out of programming ...

Overtime.

No, it's not overtime. At least not being reported. if you click on a name they break it down, these guys are earning most of that in the 'other' category.

The people over $100,000 a year seem to be making a lot in the other category. But the base pay seems around $85,000 to $100,000 for most...

http://www.sacbee.com/statepay/?agency=CALIFORNIA+HIGHWAY+PA...

Just a little perspective, the 2 people at the top of the list (do search all) are football coaches making $2 million plus each year.

And as an inspirational aside suggesting anyone can make it big, one of them coached in the Canadian Football League. He was probably lucky to make $40k a year there.

A head football coach who does well at a school like Cal can bring in revenue many multiples of $2 million per year. Unfortunately for Cal, that's not the case currently...

I've heard that particular canard before, but its just hand-waving. Who says he has to get paid $2 million? What if it was $500k? I think if you looked at it objectively, you might find that it's like startup CEOs - cheaper is better.

No one wants to hear this -- but why does everyone involved with college football make money except for the players? The schools have colluded to fix the players pay at 1 full scholarship. College football is treated like a business in all areas except for players pay, why shouldn't there be a free market for their services?

Shhh!!!

No one is supposed to talk about the plantation system in the ivory tower. Some of them do get compensation like, tuition, room & board, tutoring and free jerseys. The ones that don't are supposed to do it for the love of the game!

But life-altering injuries and head trauma are totally worth it. /s

Especially relevant after one of the Rutgers football players was paralyzed for life from the neck down this weekend. Ugh.

It probably would be worth it if the graduation rate for players was higher, but when it is in the 50-75% range for a lot of schools, most people just bumped up their education level from "high school" to "some college" while saddlying themselves with healthcare problems for life.

Thank you. I was trying to remember which school had the accident this weekend.

It just sickens me when people try to justify NCAA/NFL/NBA hoops talented athletes have to jump through just to get an audition to go pro. It's one thing to spend a few weeks in practice to go professional. It's something else to spend 4 years destroying your body before you can even get the shot at going pro.

turn on your javascript, an ajax table loads with the actual CHP salaries

As I said above, and am repeating with slightly clearer punctuation:

do "search all"

Poor Barbara Fogarty made $-80,814.55

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

The pay of government employees, in the Bay Area at least, particularly the rank and file level are paid well beyond what they would make for similar work in the private sector. This goes for everything from meter-maids to file clerks or secretaries. The police and firefighters especially get a fantastic deal considering that they do relatively menial work that doesn't require much education or experience.

Meanwhile, teachers struggle to get supplies for their classes and kids' music and art programs are cut.

Teachers are another similar category.

Is this in wealthier neighborhoods? As far as I know teachers in middle and lower middle class schools don't make much (many <$40k).

And more important are kids programs which get cut altogether. I get that there's plenty of inefficiencies but the last line of defense should be schools/education but it often seems the first.

I know a gym teacher here in NJ that makes $95k a year. Drives a 5-series BMW, indoor pool, etc. And before you ask, his wife is a teacher, also.

It appears this sort of salary inflation is happening at many levels of government. Salaries for the city of San Luis Obispo, Ca. posted by the local paper here:

http://slonews.thetribunenews.com/city_salaries/slo/

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!

The salaries of local city police and fire employees in the Bay Area is far higher. Most seem to be making over 100k per year, many over 200k and some even over 300k.

http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries

I know the local chief of police for a UC school, I will try to ask him about "other" pay.

I know that University of California, police get paid very well. But i've been told that you need to be recommended into the selection process and it's also a very small group, about a dozen officers covering 20K-30K campus. Most I know are 10-15 year vets. These salaries have always been public, and they get criticized all the time. The Chief has told me that they have to make a case for having each one of these officers every single year.

On an interesting note, UC police have jurisdiction for the entire state of California.

A feel-good story about the UC Berkeley police...

I was playing basketball at the Cal rec center and someone stole my iPhone from my sweatshirt. Later that night I texted the phone from my roommate's hoping that I could convince the thief of some kind of trade. I went to work the following day during which my roommate, who was a grad student at Berkeley (EECS!), received a text a from said thief. The thief tried to compel me or my friend to come to West Oakland (danger!), but my friend negotiated for a meeting at a Berkeley BART station. My friend called the UC police, and they organized a little sting to arrest the culprits and recover the phone. All for my first generation iPhone :) Pretty great. The transcript of the texts is pretty magnificent, too.

Share the transcript?

Here you go (I had to type it up for the police report). My friend actually met the dudes at the BART station with a brown bag with a candy bar in it, the police waiting in the wings. All for my iPhone. What a guy...

Me (on Steve's phone): Pick up the phone. And give it back.

thief (the following morning): A man I find yo phone hit m e. Backs

Steve: Cool how can i get it back from you

thief: Sense I find the can i get a reward cause I was gone throw it away but i figured u needed yo phone

thief: its up to u man

thief: hello

Steve: Yeah how much

thief: 250 or 300

thief: I jus. Need the money man am am homeless

Steve: Ok how about 100

thief: How about 200

Steve: Deal where do we meet

thief: Meet me at the am pm in west Oakland ok

Steve: Ok im at work til 8 see you there at 815

thief: Do u know anybody else dat can do it cuz datse a long time man

thief: Hello

Steve: Ok my pal can meet you at ashby bart at 3

thief: I don't have a way man tell to pal to meet me by am pm if u want yo phone i don't have all day man

Steve: My friend doesnt have a car and im in sf till 8 and hes not going into oakland. ashby at 3

thief: ok i need a number tho

thief: Ok tel yo pal to meet me at 19th. Street Bart and I'll give him my number ok

thief: so wsup man

Steve: Hes not going into oakland. ashby at 3 ok. if yeah i'll give you his number

Steve: Ok hes leaving now for ashby 200 ok his number is 510#######

thief: Ok were is he cumin from and tell him to put da money in a bag or something

Steve: Hes coming from north and the money is in a brown bag

Anyone notice the Med School profs making 1.5M/year? Wow.

They're worth every cent.

Teaching and research medicine improves patient outcomes and is ultimately for generations other than our own.

...and to the cynic these salaries secure notable individuals who can guarantee patent transfer (royalty stream) to big pharma.

What? Your comment would seem to imply that it is normal and acceptable for a single med prof to earn $1.5m. Are you really that out of touch to think that this is sustainable?

Let me guess - you were one of those complaining about how the education bubble is just terrible a few months ago?

Huh?

Where was it suggested those salaries were typical?

I'm saying in those cases where you see a seven figure salary for a department chair or chief of surgery position at a teaching and research hospital, it's because the state believes they have the very best talent available.

What is your opinion on the massive college tuition bills people have to pay for them to be able to dish out salaries anywhere near this? Teaching staff scale badly, sure some would be benefiting greatly from this professors expertise, but others would have little contact paying the same hefty tuition to support this kind of salary.

My opinion is that the compensation burden on the state is regularly offset by the distribution of grant funds.

Top talent attracts research funding that the state can't otherwise provide and guarantees future generations of doctors and scientists are trained using the most advanced technique and technology.

is this why we have a $19B budget deficit?

The jobs should be auctioned. A job is posted, the top 20 candidates are identified, and each submits a bid for how much to do the job and the lowest bid is accepted.

This is the way many other jobs are assigned such as construction contractors or engineering consultants. CA taxpayers could save a bundle with this approach.

The top 20 candidates somehow always end up being the relatives of the people running the auction. The low bidder wins, but every time someone is arrested for a crime not on the list in the contract (which is 90% of them), the state is charged an "change order" fee.

The argument "there are other problems in the world so there is no point in fixing problem X" is weak to say the least.

If there are other problems you find after cutting the cost of government worker salaries by 70%, fix them next.

That wasn't my argument at all. My argument was pointing out the common problems with a bid based approach. In almost every locale, bid-based contracts are a bigger source of government spending waste than inflated government employee salaries!

For something as generic as a law enforcement job or civil servant job, I don't see the potential for the problems you mention.

Instead of two or three contractors and a murky selection process subject to under-the-table payments, you have a large selection of very similar candidates, and the selection process is as simple as "how much will you be willing to do job X for" with the low bid winning.

Somewhere, some economist professor has to have named and analyzed this type approach.

Perhaps people will notice that it isn't just the California Highway Patrol that is doing this. Check out the Transportation, Justice, and Parks and Recreation agencies for instance. They may not always be quite as egregious, but they all have people who are receiving huge pay raises in one year from some 'Other' source.

Obviously, entrepreneurship and showbiz is not the only road to riches in the sunshine state! Maybe, and if they are good at it, the cops can make a better contribution than some CEOs do. Then again, many CEOs of startups (like me) won't take $200K home in 2010.

Well, what am I doing here?? Looks like it's time to get a job rounding up drunks in Arcata.

If you look down on the list, there seems to be an awful lot of typists employed. They should either make the officers do their own typing, or outsource that to India (send audio or scans).

If the CHP were smart they would ban together and lobby for Prop 19.

Unintelligible rise in pay between 2008 and 2009.

Stunning.

wow, what happened to that huge 2008-2009 jump?

so, what can we do about this?

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, providing you live in the United States. Try searching for "$YOUR_NEWSPAPER_NAME salary database" in your favorite search engine.

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

I think it's quite simple. If I'm a taxpayer in California, I want to know how my tax dollars are being spent.

Specifically, I'd like to know why a football coach is pulling in $2M a year while state employees are being threatened with furloughs and we're running the biggest deficit ever.

The theory is that the football coach, via increased advertising dollars from a successful football program, is bringing a lot of value. Say what you will, but big college football programs pay for themselves, and then all the other sports at the college too. At least, this is what my brother, a college sports nut, tells me.

That is correct. The football and/or basketball programs at many schools support the entire athletic department. The schools can then offer many other sports that don't even cover their costs.

I don't doubt that could be true, and if it's true then it certainly makes sense to spend $ to generate $$.

Hopefully not a parallel to overpaid CEOs whose primary responsibility is to generate wealth for the stock holders rather than take care of the employees.

You have it backwards. A CEOs responsibility is to generate shareholder value. If they work to line senior managements' pockets, that's the pathology.

It's just not advertising dollars .. they are not that much of a deal maker as far as college sports.

The success of the program and the upward trend has a major effect on these things, among others:

1) # of season tickets + individual game tickets sold 2) Seat Licenses 3) Donations to keep the tickets (e.g. My School has priority points. You need a certain # of points each year to keep the seats in the same section or get into a better section and better parking). 4) More Donations and endowed scholarships from Boosters towards infrastructure improvements or money towards the fund (viz. Nike's donation to U. Oregon, T Boone Pickens and Oklahoma State, etc.) 5) Not as significant but a successful program also leads to increase in number of applicants (esp. if the program is trending up and the exposure is increasing)

Also, The head coach might be making more than what the state paycheck comes across as .. the additional amount is either paid through an athletic funds trust or a certain percentage of advertising revenue or a certain percentage is footed by wealthy alumni

Well, it's important the USA stay competitive in the global ball relocation industry.

I know, that's harsh, lots of people love sports and donate to their colleges on that basis, sports are good for character development and leadership skills as well as physical development and so on. But I have a really hard time seeing this kind of thing as anything other than an indirect subsidy to the sports industry.

That is until they blow 5 years of profits by overbuilding a new sports center for just the football and baseball teams, to replace the 3 year old center that was also overbudget. In that case, they have to cut the italian program. Go OSU :\

If you own a share of a company, does that entitle you to know the salaries of all its employees?

Usually the yearly report for the company will show the salaries of all the top executives and board members. Not sure what the actual "law" is on that though.

It "feels" wrong, but that's the way it's set up.

I used to work for UCOP (it's in the list), and about 5 years ago there was a big issue around "total compensation" for the high-level employees. That was the event that really sparked the level of transparency that you see in this database. Around that time, I recall my manager basically telling us that our salaries were all printed out in some book in Sacramento, and that people could look them up if they really wanted to. I guess the online database just makes it seem a bit too easy.

If you care more about the UCOP stuff google for "UCOP Compensation SFGate" you'll get plenty of info. Here are a couple links to get you started on what was going down:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/11/13/...

I am in the wrong profession.

Wait, think about what you're complaining about—do you want your police to be low paid so they are more susceptible to bribes and corruption? Like they are in many other countries? And California is on the border with Mexico where massively funded global drug cartels operate.

If the average cop salary is set at some X amount higher than non-cops, then they are Y percent less likely to be on the take. If our police are a lot less corrupt, then overall, society pays more, but in theory receives an equal yet intangible benefit from better law enforcement in general.

Officers at 2008 pay levels (around $150K) are not "low paid." That's a lot of money. $250K is just insane.

I doubt anyone will argue that officers aren't owed a reasonably large salary in exchange for their training, the risks they take and their accumulated experience.

However, it is unreasonable to be giving near 100% raises over 2 year periods like we see in this data. In these cases, they are obviously gaming the system to increase their pension payouts. This is an unintended consequence of basing pension payouts on the salary of a person's last year of employment.

As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, it's very difficult to become a highway patrol officer. Just getting into the academy is hard to do. But apparently once you're in, you're set for life with a decent salary and these last-year-pay-raise games to make sure you have an unreasonably large pension as well. Artificially limiting the supply of officers in this way allows them to spread their budget over fewer people at the expensive of a smaller force.

In this system, Californians lose out not only on tax dollars that go to artificially inflated pensions, but with a smaller number of on-duty officers as well. If anything, this sounds like corruption to me.

When supply and demand don't dictate price, you have to wonder what does. There isn't a shortage of trigger happy kids wanting a job, the military recruits just fine. We overpay because it's taxed revenue so things like customer satisfaction really don't matter. They even call themselves 'public servants'..

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.

There was an article in the Washington Post (I think) about this very topic. It really is a harm to morale.

As a CA taxpayer, it certainly harms my morale.

Cheers, Carson

Morale wouldn't be undermined if wages were fair and rules around raises applied predictably.

It's when someone gets bumped to the next pay grade without merit that you're going to get sour grapes among those not as fortunate.

Pay me $48/hour to camp behind an overpass with a box of donuts and a radar gun and I'll probably get over it.

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)

We only want "accountability" because they can't be trusted to do the right thing otherwise.

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...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com