December 08, 2008
Buffalo to post payroll on web
Amid data on property assessments and paying parking tickets, the City of Buffalo's web site will soon include the city's entire payroll.
One question is: Will the city name names? Or just job titles as the towns of Orchard Park and Amherst have done on their web sites?
SeeThroughNY.net , Empire Center's transparency web site, posts the entire state payroll with names of 263,000 full and part-time employees. It also lists employees of public authorities, including the Thruway Authority, the Port Authority of NY-NJ, state Power Authority and Long Island Power Authority.
According to the Buffalo News (here):
Mayor Byron W. Brown directed city attorneys today to look into various options for posting salary data.
"We don't want to violate anyone's privacy, but it is public information," Brown said
Yes, Mayor Brown, it's public information. Putting the payroll online without names frustrates taxpayers' ability to understand how much they are paying for city services. Employers (i.e.taxpayers) should know how much they are paying their employees.
Also yet to be determined, the News says, is whether the city will post base salaries or gross wages.
But if the city starts posting employees' gross pay -- not just base salaries -- it will show that hundreds of workers make substantial sums in overtime and other forms of compensation. For example, 70 police and 30 firefighters earned more than $100,000 in 2007.
More than 200 officers and firefighters earned more than $90,000, and more than 300 made more than $80,000.
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