10 insanely overpaid public employees

[niyad]

10 Insanely Overpaid Public Employees
State Employees

By BLAIRE BRIODY, The Fiscal Times
July 13, 2011

When it comes to government employees, there’s plenty of news about laid off social workers in Florida, furloughed forest rangers in Minnesota, and underpaid teachers everywhere else. Yet even during these hard times, there are thousands of government employees who still earn great, big salaries – many of them hundreds of thousands more than the $400,000 Obama pulls down each year. In 2009, 347 Texas state employees earned more than the president; 53 of them made more than $600,000. In New York, 35 employees were paid over $400k last year. Since 2005, the number of Federal employees earning $150,000 plus has jumped tenfold: going from 12,399 to 171,689. Much of the increase has been in medicine. Doctors at veterans hospitals and prisons averaged $179,500 in 2010, up from $111,000 in 2005.




See our slideshow here on 10 insanely overpaid government employees. We reported all their yearly earnings, which in addition to base salary, includes bonuses, overtime pay, and other pay. The “other pay” can be things like unused sick days--$594,976 worth of them for one California employee – something private sector employees could only dream of. Oh, and did we mention all of them are men?
Read more at http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/07/13/10-Insanely-Overpaid-Public-Employees.aspx#F6h6jHP5mhec2y2f.99

[jazzimov]

1. What is it that Corporations say to justify

the huge salaries they pay to CEO's and VP's? Something about attracting talent?

[Comrade_McKenzie]

2. I'd rather have 8 public sector employees getting paid $75,000 a year...

Than one making $600,000.

That is ridiculous.

[SheilaT]

3. Supposedly what those people do is so valuable that they deserve that money.

Bullshit. They are not thousands of times more productive than whoever the lowest paid employee is out there.

I watch the show Undercover Boss. It's interesting in all sorts of ways, not the least of which is that the boss can rarely keep up with the pace of most of the jobs in the company. And they still never quite seem to get it, that those low-level hard working employees are paid crap, especially compared to the CEO, who invariably lives in an amazingly nice home in a fabulous neighborhood.

I work for a hospital which is a non-profit. Our CEO is paid around six hundred grand a year. Okay, so I couldn't actually do his job, but he's still not several hundred times more worthwhile than what I am. I'm not even a medical person. I work the information desk, so I'm actually the face of the hospital to a great many of those who walk through those front doors. And the nurses and the CNA's (certified nursing assistants), they're the ones who are on the front line of patient care. Just a couple of small examples among the many out there.

[spedtr90]

4. Really? Private sector can only dream of such money?

Duke University (PRIVATE college) - Duke men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski earned more than $7.2 million in compensation during the 2010 calendar year, according to the federal tax return the university filed. Now that's insane.

John H. Noseworthy, CEO of PRIVATE Mayo Clinic $727,294 (salary only).

Dig a bit and public compensation is not out of line with private for similar work. Wisconsin found out that it cost them more to contract private company engineers compared to the state employees. Private charter schools taking public money become top heavy with administrators.


You need the whole picture.

[progressoid]

5. Don't get me started on coaches.

[Ikonoklast]

11. Coaches are highly paid because a winning program generates revenue.

Maintain a high ROI for the institution, or they get canned.

Of course, they do it with labor supplied to them for free but paid for by others, many times it's the taxpayers subsidizing tuition costs.

[progressoid]

16. Yet, nearly all sports programs operate at a loss to the university. Even the winning ones.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/college/story/2012-05-14/ncaa-college-athletics-finances-database/54955804/1

Most college athletic departments are a net drain on the budget. Three years ago, the NCAA issued a report that found most athletic departments operate in the red. A more recent analysis by Bloomberg found the same thing: 46 of the 53 schools it looked at subsidized their sports programs. The money usually comes from sources such as student activity fees, such as that charged at Virginia Commonwealth University. Earlier this year VCU jacked up its fee by $50 to help fund the Rams basketball program.

A story last year in USA Today reported that "at least six schools—all in Virginia—charged each of their students more than $1,000 as an athletics fee for the 2008-09 school year. That ranged from 10 percent to more than 23 percent of the total tuition and mandatory-fee charges for in-state students." Yet some students never attend so much as a single basketball or football game—never mind a lacrosse match or rowing competition.
http://reason.com/archives/2011/10/14/stop-funding-college-sports

Myth: The money earned from college sports helps other parts of the university.

Reality: Because athletic department expenses usually exceed revenues, any money earned by college sports teams stays in the athletic department. Moreover, athletic departments admit that they have no intention of sharing their revenue; an NCAA survey reported that fewer than 1 percent of all athletic programs defined their "fiscal objective" as earning money "to support nonathletics activities of the institution."

Rather than financially help the university, most athletic programs siphon money from it: for example, the enormous maintenance costs of stadiums and other facilities-used exclusively for athletic program events and by their elite athletes-are often placed in the "Buildings-and-Grounds" line in the university-wide budget, and the multi-million dollar debt servicing on these facilities is frequently paid by regular students in the form of mandatory "fees."

To cover athletic program losses, schools must divert money from their budgets and other financial resources. Thus funds that could go to academic programs, student scholarships, faculty and staff salaries disappear into the athletic department deficit.

https://netfiles.uiuc.edu/hschein/www/readings/athletics/collegesports.html

DOES COLLEGE FOOTBALL MAKE SCHOOLS RICHER OR POORER?
Short answer: It enriches the powerhouses, but the larger story is mixed.

In August, the NCAA released a financial breakdown of college athletics programs from 2004 through 2010. In those years, hardly more than half of the roughly 120 teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, the old Division 1-A, generated a profit from football. Those teams netted a median gain of $9.1 million. Among the programs stuck in the red, their median loss was $2.9 million. So for elite football schools, the game is a cash cow capable of subsidizing less remunerative sports. For the gridiron also-rans, it's just one more expense.

IS COLLEGE FOOTBALL BAD FOR ACADEMICS?
Short answer: Winning teams appear to be bad for grades, but good for graduation rates.

The results weren't pretty. When Oregon won more, men's grades dropped relative to women's. When they lost, men's grades recovered. In a survey that accompanied their grade analysis, 28% of male students reported drinking more when a team won. About 20% of women said the same. Shotgunning a celebratory postgame beer, it seems, isn't conducive with studying for an economics final.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/would-colleges-be-better-off-without-football/250691/

But of course the corporations that sponsor them are making plenty of money.

[niyad]

19. thank you for this link. I knew some of the figures from prior reading, but good to have it all

in one linked spot.

[Initech]

6. *NO* workers are overpaid. CEOs definitely are.

It's truly disgusting to think that otherwise - we live in an era where the CEO makes 100 - 1000X the salary of the average worker and they have the balls to say we're overpaid. It's disgusting. Fuck this Heritage Foundation bullshit.

[bbgrunt]

7. It is not clear that these positions all are technically public sector

employees. University coaches salaries, for example, are often a combination of public funds and private funds.

[wickerwoman]

8. Hmmm, yes.

Someone who makes $700,000 a year because that one year he happened to get paid the *two and a half years* worth of sick time he hadn't used. I.e. he didn't miss a day of work for 32 and a half years and was compensated as he was retiring for all of the unused sick leave. Shocking I tell you, shocking. Those lazy public employees are draining our country dry. Pay no attention to their private equivalents who make more for the same jobs or to the 10 most insanely overpaid private employees who make literally 10,000 times what the examples given here do and some of whom do no work whatsoever.

Did you actually read this garbage before posting it here? At least three of those people were being compensated for not taking sick leave, not using annual leave and/or working massive amounts of overtime. That's not "insane overpayment". That's fair compensation for busting your ass at a hard job.

Is America seriously so brainwashed as a nation that on DU of all places we're supposed to sit around a cluck our tongues at the notion that OMG someone should actually be paid for the hours they work and not donate literally years worth of free labor so that the company or organisation they work for can cut more staff and pile even more on them?

I'm sorry, but I can't even tell you how much this bullshit pisses me off and how disappointed I am to see it posted here.

[niyad]

9. actually, yes, I read the WHOLE article. and nowhere did it say the guy had worked for 32 years

at his job. the article fascinated me, period.

[joeglow3]

18. That only highlights a different issue.

Lets assume he worked 32 years and had 2.5 of unused sick days. If he never used a single sick day in 32 years, that means he accrues sick days at a rate of 7.8125%. In a 260 work day year, he was given over 20 sick days a year. That seems a bit wasteful.

[RobinA]

20. I Currently

work in the public sector after working in the private sector for 30 some years. I do get a tad more sick days than I did in the private sector. However, this is the first job I have had where there is NO disablity as a benefit, our sick days are our disability. Now, I KNOW everyone does not have disability. I am just saying this as a way of explaining the increased public sector sick days IN MY CASE and probably some others. The public sector benefits are always held up as some pot of gold for the workers, always citing the ones that are better than average without taking into account the ones that are worse. Health insurance, pension good. Vacation, pay, working conditions bad.

[CBGLuthier]

10. Since coaches at state schools get a million a year or so

I think they would be the leading hogs at the trough in this overpaid public employee debate.

[niyad]

13. I think the point was, everyone knows about the coaches. these are lesser lights.

[MineralMan]

12. And we should not even mention the football coaches

at major public universities, I suppose. Uff da!

[niyad]

14. as i said, everyone knows about the coaches already. quite frankly, I am still annoyed that

the people of CO had to pay off the jerk who started promise keepers, even though he left of his own accord. and I am still annoyed that the rutgers' coach got his 100k bonus, because the officials didn't bother to do their jobs in december.

[IdaBriggs]

15. This article is very misleading.

The very first guy won a lawsuit, and you've got people collecting for unused sick days (also known as "comprehensive time off" policies). Some of them I am not sure about, but the ones I do make me skeptical about the veracity of the rest of them.

Interesting premise, but not very trustworthy data.

[Johonny]

17. They are only over paid if the private sector pays less... 1 mill for a bball coach not overpaid

Jim Boeheim salary: $1.5 million, Rick Pitino is making 3.9 million... the industry is a billion dollar industry. Why should I be surprised that an industry the makes huge money pays well?

Same for the several CEO's, the investment banker or the chancellor of Universities. The whole article is worthless. Should public employees eat * all day and get paid a penny for the pleasure to please people. The head of the college made around a million which is 10-20 times a teachers salary there. So that is like WAY BETTER then the CEO average in this nation. The whole article is totally misleading.