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Government Takes A Lot Of Green

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By STEVE OTTO

sotto@tampatrib.com

Published: February 25, 2009

How much we make (or don't make) is one of those personal bits of information we like to keep to ourselves.

That's what makes perusing through a database of 33,488 government employees' salaries sort of like eating potato chips. You can't stop.

Of course, it's our money, and it gets a little overwhelming as you go down page after page of pretty respectable numbers and wonder how we can afford so much.

The truth is we can't, which adds to the fun as you mentally make a checklist of jobs and salaries that seem out of kilter with what is available in private life. It seems to me that government jobs always were seen as stable even if they didn't pay that well. Now it appears they also pay that well.

The database is on TBO.com. The salaries are all public record, but TBO has assembled nine local governments into one shock-and-awe-producing pile.

I only looked at the top 10,000, which still can kill an evening when you could have instead been watching the endless coverage on cable television of the growing economic recession.

The only truism you draw from looking at the sizes of the paychecks is that local government is exactly like the private sector, where the people who do the most work seem to make the least amounts.

The Big Guns
The big salaries go pretty much to the jobs you would expect. At the top is Louis Miller, who is the director of the Aviation Authority, at $253,302. It's hard to argue with that one. That place, with all its complexities, technologies and the fact it has to deal with thousands of usually grumpy passengers every day, takes a special person to make it all work. The man has proved his worth 100 times over.

The Port Authority director is right behind and it is an equally tough job.

No. 3 in all of government is Vernard Adams, who makes $244,899 as Hillsborough County's chief medical examiner. I've been down to his place and watched him work. No thanks. There isn't enough money in any budget for me or, I suspect, most of us, to do what he does.

After that you begin getting into the world of "executives," people with offices and aides and the kinds of jobs that usually include long lunches.

Counting Skeletons

There are a couple of county administrators in the top 10. Hillsborough's Pat Bean pulls in $221,395, but then she has been around for a few years and knows where all the skeletons are hidden in the county closets.

Two of the top 20 salaries go to the Tampa Sports Authority, where the director draws $205,004 and the director of operations gets $181,147.

Rick Baker, the mayor of St. Petersburg, gets $162,314, and Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio pulls down $149,999.

Like I said, it's a long list. You have to go through 800 names before you slip out of the triple digit salaries, when you get to the director of residential valuation, somewhere down at the county appraiser's office, and his $100,006 annual pay.

This is not a complete list. For example, it skips the school system, led by its administrator's base salary of more than $252,000.

All in all, it is a little overwhelming. You know, anybody can grow up to be president. But you can do pretty well if you just stay in Hillsborough County.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, for more of Steve Otto's musings. To see salaries of local government employees, go to TBO .com, Keyword: Government salaries.

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