Politics

Local Spotlight

By Nisha Thompson

In honor of  Tax Day Ohio’s Jason Hart took a look at salary information for Franklin County’s administrators, specifically looking at raises over the past three years.  He got some interesting results — most places the highest level people didn’t get raises except for one department.

Friday, April 9^th is Tax Freedom Day, when the average American has earned enough to pay Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam?s various relatives what they demand. Ohio is somehow a day ahead of the average, so in honor of the big day tomorrow I thought I?d dig through some salary info for public administrators here in Franklin County. As boring as I am, I ought to make an effort to avoid any talk of numbers or statistics. As stubborn as I am, I won?t!

With employment and the economy in general down for the past year and a half, I wanted to see how the smallest of government big-shots were rewarding themselves relative to 2007 and 2008. Despite widespread populist railing against private industry salaries and bonuses, I expected to see pay increases for the insulated local bureaucrats our tax dollars keep employed. Given some of the things I?ve read recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the data.

A helpful CPA in the Franklin County Auditor?s office responded to my public records request promptly, with salary data on all Franklin County employees from 2007-2010. Download the Excel file if you?d like to check my numbers or do some analysis of your own. I?ll list hourly rates instead of annual salaries, as 2009 contained 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. Let?s start with the highest branch on the Franklin County tree, shall we?

Read the rest here.

This is a really fascinating use of data and another reason why we can all benefit from continuing to demand that all kinds of information be made available online.  Information than can empower people to find the right questions to ask their government.

Full post as published by Sunlight Foundation on April 13, 2010 (boomark / email).