LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – New data posted online by State Controller John Chiang on Monday offers a look at the pay for public employees and elected officials statewide, and also identifies those who are highest paid.
Chiang updated his employee compensation Web site, www.publicpay.ca.gov , by releasing 2013 city and county data and an improved tool to identify elected officials in the payroll records.
As of Monday, Chiang said the site has had more than eight million pageviews since it was launched in 2010.
“Our Web site continues to evolve as do our efforts to use technological innovation to make government spending decisions more accessible to the public we serve,” said Chiang.
The Monday update, Chiang said, includes more than $36.6 billion in salaries of city and county employees, and provides a broader picture of public compensation by adding a fifth year of wage data.
Chiang launched the effort to make such pay information readily available to the public in the wake of the scandal in 2010 involving the Southern California city of Bell, where public officials were paid extremely high salaries.
Altogether – with Monday's update included – Chiang's Web site contains information on more than two million positions with $359.4 billion in wages and $96.2 billion in total benefits paid from 2009 through 2013.
The site also makes maps, search functions and custom report-building tools available, and allows users to download raw data sets for their own research.
The latest data covers wages for 455 cities and 53 of California's 58 counties. Those include the county of Lake and the cities of Clearlake and Lakeport.
Chiang said that four entities failed to file their wages, while another 25 filed noncompliant reports that were either incomplete, in a different format than the one requested by his office, or were submitted after the reporting deadline and are currently under review.
Cities failing to file were Maricopa, Holtville and Dunsmuir, while noncompliant cities were Albany, Angels, Berkeley, Burbank, Cerritos, Compton, Eureka, Fort Jones, Glendale, Half Moon Bay, Huntington Park, Isleton, Needles, Ojai, Pleasant Hill, San Jose, San Juan Bautista, San Juan Capistrano, Santa Fe Springs, Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Solana Beach.
Among the state's counties, only Santa Clara failed to file, but Lassen, Kings and Yuba were noncompliant.
Compensation for cities of Clearlake and Lakeport, county of Lake
The 2013 county data covers approximately 331,953 county employees across California. Chiang's breakdown gives an average of 6,263 employees per county, with the counties averaging 107 residents per employee.
The statewide pay average for county employees is $58,538, with the retirement and health costs for those workers averaging $22,556 each.
Lake County had 1,109 employees listed in 2013, with an average of one employee for every 58 county residents, the report showed.
The average wages for county of Lake employees for that year totaled $35,521, and average retirement and health costs for each person was $11,911. The county paid a total of $39,392,382 million in wages that year, with total retirement and health costs at approximately $13,209,634, according to Chiang's data.
The county's top five highest paid employees (including salary followed by retirement/health costs) for 2013 were the public health officer, $153,512, $38,334; county counsel, $125,291, $31,138; Social Services director, $120,774, $30,325; county administrative officer, $115,209, $31,514; and deputy sheriff sergeant, $106,876, $20,660.
In 2009 and 2010, Lake County's salaries were in the mid-range statewide, falling into the lowest pay levels in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
Among the 455 cities that reported, there were a total of 279,014 employees, an average of 613 employees per city and an estimated 105 city residents per one employee, the data showed.
Statewide, city wages averaged $61,693, with $17,344 the average retirement and health costs for those employees.
Total wages paid by all of those 455 cities in 2013 was $17.2 billion, with $4.83 billion in retirement and health costs, the site showed.
The city of Clearlake, with 15,194 residents, had a total of 59 employees and 257 residents per employee, according to the city's filings with Chiang's office.
Clearlake's average wages and retirement and health costs for its employees were $44,159 and $23,134, respectively, with all wages totaling $2,605,364 and $1,364,898 in total health and retirement costs in 2013.
Clearlake's top wage earners in 2013 (with retirement and health costs listed following the salary), were the city manager, $137,398, $36,240; police chief, $134,842, $79,653; police sergeant, $110,414, $36,368; police lieutenant, $85,089, $68,033; and police sergeant, $83,473, $51,853.
For Lakeport, which has 4,807 residents and 84 employees – with an average of one employee for every 57 residents – wages averaged $30,063 in 2013, with the average retirement and health cost at $13,147, the city's data showed.
Lakeport paid a total of $2,525,275 in wages in 2013, and $1,104,353 in retirement and health costs.
The city's top wage earners in 2013 (with retirement and health costs listed following the salary), were the city manager $119,847, $30,624; Public Works director, $91,357, $32,137; police chief, $87,701, $56,566; police sergeant, $87,349, $48,623; and Administrative Services director, $84,207, $36,579.
Controller lists top paid employees statewide
Chiang's office gave a rundown of the five highest paid city elected officials in California, three of them in the city of San Francisco.
They are as follows:
– Redondo Beach, city attorney, $289,130;
– San Francisco, mayor, $287,691.
– San Francisco, district attorney, $260,813.
– San Francisco, city attorney, $235,713
– Santa Clara, police chief: $233,603.
The cities with the top five highest paid mayors in 2013 were:
– San Francisco, $287,691;
– Los Angeles, $194,164;
– Oakland, $146,548;
– Chula Vista, $141,975;
– Fresno, $133,600.
The state's five highest paid members of a county board of supervisors were all from Los Angeles County, ranging from $218,583 to $223,402, with the top five city council members all from the city of Los Angeles, and earning between $178,104 and $179,304.
Lake County's supervisors' pay ranged from $49,471 in salary and $20,590 in retirement and health costs up to $60,865 and $20,543, respectively, in 2013, according to Chiang's site.
Council members in the city of Clearlake earned between $3,600 and $5,140 in wages and $5,153 and $25,176 in retirement and health costs in 2013.
In Lakeport, council member pay ranged from $282 up to $3,750 in 2013, with retirement and health costs totaling between $1,245 and $12,338 for individual council members.
The cities with the five highest paid city managers in 2013 were:
– Moreno Valley, $439,976;
– Escondido, $377,419;
– Santa Monica, $366,684;
– San Mateo, $343,000;
– South San Francisco, $336,965.
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
New data posted by state controller shows pay for local officials
- Elizabeth Larson
- Posted On