Show us the money

Early this year, the CN&R published a story about the city of Chico’s employee-compensation packages. We learned that, based on the latest data from the state Controller’s Office denoting salaries and benefits from 2012, out of 482 incorporated California cities and towns, Chico, where the median household income is $43,000, ranked 25th for highest-compensated city employees (see “Strong-arming the budget,” by Dave Waddell, Feb. 27).

The community was understandably infuriated by this information. As it turns out, the average city of Chico employee two years ago earned $99,585 per year. Separating out salary and benefits from the total compensation levels placed Chico 44th in the state for pay with an average of $67,645 per employee. As for benefits, those packages pegged the city at 15th in the state with an average of $32,000. That’s nearly twice the state average of $17,500.

Fast forward to today and the city is in negotiations with one of its largest employee bargaining groups: the Chico Police Officers’ Association. That union as well as a few others, including the other public-safety group, the firefighters union, took concessions in 2013 in the face of the city’s efforts to pull its budget into the black.

The question now is whether those concessions bring down those compensation packages to sustainable levels. That’s what several watchdog citizens are attempting to find out, but they’re having trouble doing so. One of them, Michael Jones, recently filed a public records request for the numbers—the compensation of each city employee. What he received was a “data dump of 317,613 lines of Excel spreadsheet” in a read-only form that doesn’t allow for easy analysis, especially considering the benefits aren’t broken into categories (i.e. CalPERS, health insurance, etc.).

In other words, it’s the kind of info that likely would confuse a Harvard-educated accountant. Jones is suggesting that the city publish that info on its website in a clear, digestible format. It’s the best way, he says, to have transparent discussions about what employees should be paid. His request is on the City Council’s agenda for its Oct. 7 meeting, under reports and communications. We’re with Jones on this one. So, show us the money.