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While I think transparency is great and it should be enforced, I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, bu

While I think transparency is great and it should be enforced, I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, but to sway public opinion against public spending in general. One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance, and that teachers in Baltimore are overpaid [1]. Another says that a $100,000 salary is "too high" for Texas public workers [2]. I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive. These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. [1] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-baltimore-city-public-schools-promoted-student-with-013-gpa-while-spending-a-14-billion-budget/ https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-baltimore-city-public-sc... [2] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-texas-is-in-trouble---78064-public-employees-with-100000-paychecks-cost-taxpayers-12-billion/ https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-texas-is-in-trouble-... [3] https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-trouble--19000-highly-compensated-city-employees-earned-150000-in-pay--perks/ https://www.openthebooks.com/forbes-why-san-francisco-is-in-...

lotsofpulp 5y ago
How does suggesting something set a dangerous precedent? People are allowed to have opinions, even stupid ones.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  Read the articles. Specifically, for the Baltimore school system, they compare the average wages of a teacher in the public sector, with the average of a teacher in a catholic school. They try to make the point that $40,000 a year is enough for a teacher in Baltimore. Now, for a person to have an opinion is fine. But this is a partisan organization, devoted to pushing an agenda and spread it to the public opinion. If they were to succeed, teachers would see their salaries effectively cut.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    They might succeed, but that is the price of freedom of speech. The good people in society need to work to oppose these organizations, and use the same transparent data to make the opposite case. I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore. But it is possible for firefighters or teachers or anyone to be overpaid. I have even seen it where the firefighters union (and police unions) have captured local government, and captured DB pensions worth millions of dollars where they walk away at age 45 with a $100k+ per year annuity for the rest of their life.
    - Aunche 5y ago
      > I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore. When I read a comment like this, I'm reminded of how much of a bubble HN is. $40k a year is higher than the median personal income of the US, which is higher than the median personal income of Baltimore. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age%2CYears15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explo...
      - specialist 5y ago
        Is the median wage a living wage?
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        I know that, and I think it is insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives. Also, a better comparison would be to median income of people of working age working in roles with the work and responsibilities of teachers, or the type of work that our ideal teachers are doing instead of teaching, because the pay is so meager.
- Guvante 5y ago
  There is a difference between having an opinion and lobbying.
  - caminante 5y ago
    Why are you making this vague distinction instead of addressing the actual conclusion (on topic)? > Suggesting [x], is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. The root parent shared a values-based opinion with no objective support. Your parent asked for an explanation of the circular conclusion.
    - Guvante 5y ago
      The only thing of substance in the parent was "opinions aren't dangerous". Since that isn't accurate (lobbying can be dangerous) there wasn't anything substantial to respond to.
      - RHSeeger 5y ago
        - Opinions aren't dangerous - Lobbying can be dangerous Those two things are orthogonal. Lobbying is not "an opinion". Lobbying is an attempt to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials. An opinion is just what someone thinks about someone. It is possible to lobby your government official to get them to support your position, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
      - caminante 5y ago
        > "opinions aren't dangerous" [...] Since that isn't accurate [...] At face value, it really sounds like you're accusing people of thought-crimes for having an opinion (e.g. firefighters are overpaid/underpaid/fairly-paid). > (lobbying can be dangerous) And if you think that firefighters are underpaid, then couldn't lobbying (i.e. firefighter unions) possibly produce "good" outcomes? Can someone call that outcome dangerous? This really boils down to you making a value judgment AGAINST lowering firefighter pay. That's what the grandparent comment said and other commenters asked for the reasoning.
  - 5y ago
cultofmetatron 5y ago
> $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive Holy shit. IF its anything like when i lived there 5 years ago, thats JUST enough to not be on the poverty line if you're supporting a family
- rsj_hn 5y ago
  150K is not anywhere close to the poverty line. In fact median household income in San Francisco is 112K. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia Honestly this comes off pretty elitist. "Well, George, if you're not earning 400K then you're dreadfully poor!"
  - tsuujin 5y ago
    I worked for a company located in SF not long ago, I don’t think most people appreciate just how absurd the cost of living there actually is. The people I worked with lived in fairly small apartments, shared with up to eight co-tenets. It was all they could reasonably afford, and they were well payed tech employees. I bought a new house in the Central Valley for the same pay.
    - rsj_hn 5y ago
      I lived in SF also, and know exactly how much it costs to live there. I also know that because the cost of living is high, many people commute into San Francisco to work, living where it's cheaper. But even in SF, 112K is sufficient for 50% of households, and the median household does not live in a small apartment with eight cotenants. That's also absurd.
      - closeparen 5y ago
        Those households moved in prior to prices going crazy, and have arrangements like mortgages, prop 13, and rent control such that they're still paying outdated prices.
  - codingdave 5y ago
cyou111 5y ago
Are farmers not in charge of essential duties? Are people working at electric plant, building houses, plumbing, manufacturing clothing, in charge of essential duties? How should they be paid? There shouldn't be a market price for that? And who among us are performing non-essential duties? What does "essential duties" even mean? Should all so called essential duties be publicly funded? If so, by who? by the remaining of us who are providing non-essential duties?
Pulcinella 5y ago
Yeah reading the articles you posted it’s clear that any amount of public spending is too much for OpenTheBooks. Especially how they point out how much of the school budgets goes to labor costs (labor costs are the largest cost of nearly every organization and business) and how many employees in Dallas ISD and Houston ISD make >$100,000 a year (DISD employees ~22,000 people and HISD ~30,000. Both serve hundreds of thousands of students. So they are just complaining about big numbers. Also DISD already implements the “performance based” pay they suggest. I despise such a system, but the promise is that “if your one of the best teachers, you can actually make $100,000 a year”). Edit: Also the Teacher Retirement System is basically a massive investment firm. The more money it makes for the teacher pension, the less the public has to kick in to make up for any pension shortfalls. You would presumably want to hire the best of the best. Now if that actually happens is debatable, but you absolutely would not want to cut those salaries to the bone.
rkk3 5y ago
> I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive. When it's almost 19,000 public employee's being paid over $150,000 in SF, that kind of does sound excessive especially in the context of a budget deficit. > These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. It-least in [3] they never use the word Teacher. They do claim the average Firefighter Comp is 191,000 in SF. Maybe it's not 191K but isn't there some number where people in charge essential duties can be "overpaid" ?
- kelseyfrog 5y ago
  > that kind of does sound excessive I don't know about you, but I'd have to compare it to cost of living references and public employee's per capita to begin to have an understanding. Even if I had that, there are many other factors I'd want to explore: what's the impact of CoL and commuting? What's the impact of employees not living in the jurisdictional area? What are the structural systems which function to determine salaries, both as an interaction with labor markets and those that have been institutionalized? If I was hired as a consultant to make judgements on SF public spending, in short, I'd do my due diligence.
  - rkk3 5y ago
    Is this the bureaucracy defense? I need to be certified, have 30 years experience, and do a 10,000 page analysis before I can have a "legitimate" opinion.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      No, but you presented a false dichotomy.
      - rkk3 5y ago
        They are saying my process isn't "rigorous" enough and needs to follow their complicated rules and ways of doing things, I don't think calling that bureaucratic is a false dichotomy.
nickpp 5y ago
> sway public opinion against public spending in general When public spending inevitably degenerates into nepotism and corruption, that is just cutting the problem at its root. What alternative do you propose?
CyberRabbi 5y ago
> but to sway public opinion against public spending in general The motive behind information should be irrelevant in terms of its veracity but your implied premise here is interesting: advocating to reduce public spending is wrong. Obviously no government can support indefinitely high public spending, so at some point there needs to be a reduction of public spending in the public’s favor lest the government institution go bankrupt. In that case advocating for reduced public spending would obviously be right, not wrong, at least by your apparent moral standards. At what point would you consider it right to reduce public spending? Or rather, what factors would you consider when making a determination as to whether public spending is too high?
jedberg 5y ago
Their motives might be suspect, but their goals are admirable. There is no reason every state payment shouldn’t be public.
- specialist 5y ago
  Pick your allies carefully. I flirted with a transparency org. Washington Citizens for Open Government. The libertarian minded (Discovery Institute, Toby Nixon, Paul Guppy, so many others) used these nonpartisan good govt orgs to advocate their religion. It was maddening. For instance, simultaneously advocating transparency AND privatization, without irony. Corporations are not subject to public records requests. Many an agency outsourced work to keep the activities away from public scrutiny. Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization. By all means, advocate for better stuff. Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith. The paradox of tolerance, on endless repeat. I have no ideas how to avoid that trap. A large part of my burn out as an activist.
  - splistud 5y ago
    "Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization." "Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith." The only bad faith displayed here is yours.
    - specialist 5y ago
      You're saying water isn't wet?
systemvoltage 5y ago
I don't like comments like this. They divert attention from the topic to some underlying motivation (which is suspect). This way, we keep playing tribal politics, instead of being grounded in truth. Textbook whataboutism.
chmod600 5y ago
If two people are making $150000 each, that's a household with $300000 in income. That's not bad for a stable government job. Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid. If you work for a private business, nobody else knows or cares about your salary. But when you work for government, every taxpayer has a right to complain. Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  >Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position. Why?
- Bud 5y ago
  Having a "right to complain" doesn't mean that it's accurate, fair, just, or a good idea to complain.
  - chmod600 5y ago
    So what's the "dangerous precedent" then?
  - SllX 5y ago
    Every dollar paid to the government in taxes is a dollar someone else earned. People are going to complain about that, and it is entirely fair and just to do so. Whether it’s a good idea boils down to where your own politics are, so that’s always going to be subjective.
    - unethical_ban 5y ago
      Implying they could have earned that money without the existence of government. Government is an essential service.
      - SllX 5y ago
        It’s not implying anything. That is literally how taxes work. See income taxes: A compensatory agreement between employer and employee is I pay you $X for work. The government then levies a percentage of that money for itself. You can see that on your paystub. You’re not paid $X and an amount equal to a percentage of $X is then donated to the government, that percentage comes directly from your compensation. It’s a revenue stream for governments, sure, but how much revenue a government needs is determined by what policies a government has in place, their obligations to pay employees and officers, and what additional services the government offers. The politics is all around that stuff, but a tax is still a taking of the money that someone else earned to pay for all that, including to pay public employees.
jameslk 5y ago
> I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, but to sway public opinion against public spending in general. They might spin their findings into something you dislike, but consider that other journalists and researchers could have access to these records to bring other useful insights to the public. Isn't this the whole point of maintaining a healthy democracy (i.e. the fourth estate)?
stephen_cagle 5y ago
Sure, but I would be happy to team with people whom I personally disagree with if the end result is more transparency. Transparency feels like one of those necessary things for functioning democracy. Aside. I think public services, which are not subject to market forces, should be required to be easily auditable. The tradeoff you make for being a government monopoly is that any citizen should have the right to inspect it.
Aunche 5y ago
While I agree with you that the motives of of this organization are suspect, nobody really seems to care about government inefficiency aside from anti-government people. Raising these concerns from the left is frowned upon because it weakens you politically. As a result, I think that the government is falling into a trap where they think that the best way to solve a problem is to throw money at it.
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  I am left leaning and I want the government to do more with the same amount of funding. Anyone that opposes this belief is perpetuating dysfunctional state of affairs - left, right, libertarian, whatever. It won't be too long I'll lose interest in the party if they don't fix things. I pay a lot of taxes in Alameda county and I am thinking about leaving this place precisely because of how horribly run this local government is.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Why is it badly run, can you find someone who could do it better?
  - colpabar 5y ago
    A common response to your contingency plan is “oh great, another californian is going to come here and vote for politicians who will turn our state into california.”
    - systemvoltage 5y ago
      A common response to my contingency plan here is "oh great, another Californian leaving for Fascist trumpers and Qanon loonies" :-) I am changing. I might be voting for Republican (local) representatives for the very first time if they're not too crazy and have rational mediated approach, or centrist Democrats for that matter. Most Republicans I've talked to including my college friends reject Trumpism, but also reject toxic Berkeley's wokeness. So, I am in the same boat it feels despite of different labels. It was actually eye-opening talking to some old friends with whom I used to disagree in college, but now we're more mature and in our late 30's - and far more rational about things.
RHSeeger 5y ago
> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. Saying that one should never consider a firefighter or teacher overpayed sets a dangerous precedent. Sure most of them are not, maybe even all of them, but if a situation is found where some _are_ overpayed, then it should not be bad to discuss it.
fjudehrhdrc 5y ago
I'm not really sure I see the relevance of this extra information beyond pre-biasing people. If transparency makes your spending look bad to voters it's not the transparency advocate's fault it's yours.
llsf 5y ago
Regardless of their agenda, the data should be public. Once it is public, we can argue about what is needed or too expensive. And the best reasoning should win.
WalterBright 5y ago
> One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance What's wrong with that? That's how markets work, and they work well.
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  > That's how markets work, and they work well. You haven't been paying much attention to markets lately, then. Also, there are things that shouldn't be treated as a market. Education is one of them, unless the goal is to exacerbate inequality.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The general mediocrity of the public school system suggests otherwise. It exhibits all the classic problems with centralized government control. The current attempt by it to achieve equality by eliminating testing and gifted programs is mind-boggling.
- lalaland1125 5y ago
  Tying education spending to performance is very difficult because student performance is primarily due to socioeconomic factors, and not the school. In the worst case, teachers at inner city schools who have the hardest jobs get paid the least since their students do the worst.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    That's a good point. So the performance part of their pay can be set to be relative to that of other teachers in the same school.
- elteto 5y ago
  One issue is that schools in disadvantaged areas tend to already have bad performance, and if you tie spending to performance results they will in turn receive even less funds, which will cause them to fall even more behind and then get even worse results, and so on the cycle goes. It’s a negative feedback loop.
yumraj 5y ago
> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also. Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened. EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all. [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-professor-salary-SRCH_IL.0,11_IC1164021_KO12,31.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...
- dfinninger 5y ago
  Teachers do not make 150k in SF. The pay schedules are public [0]. If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k. [0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/labor-contracts-mous-and-salary-schedules https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  A professorship is a prestige position that’s subject to extreme competition. Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive because every newly minted PhD dreams of becoming a professor. The same isn’t true of a grade school teaching job. People aren’t lining up to babysit a bunch of misbehaving kids.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
The worst possible (or close to) solution to keep "anti guvernement spending" activists away is keeping your spending secret. "CALIFORNIA SPENT $20 MILLION ON PAPERCLIPS LAST YEAR, THAT IS TOO MUCH" > No we did not. "SHOWS US THE BOOKS. HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS DID YOU BUY AND FROM WHOM" > No that is secret. "IT CANT BE YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SHOW US HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS" > Well we can, but it is too much work, so no. Governments should strive for transparency and be able to admit errors if any are made.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

How does suggesting something set a dangerous precedent? People are allowed to have opinions, even stupid ones.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
Read the articles. Specifically, for the Baltimore school system, they compare the average wages of a teacher in the public sector, with the average of a teacher in a catholic school. They try to make the point that $40,000 a year is enough for a teacher in Baltimore. Now, for a person to have an opinion is fine. But this is a partisan organization, devoted to pushing an agenda and spread it to the public opinion. If they were to succeed, teachers would see their salaries effectively cut.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  They might succeed, but that is the price of freedom of speech. The good people in society need to work to oppose these organizations, and use the same transparent data to make the opposite case. I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore. But it is possible for firefighters or teachers or anyone to be overpaid. I have even seen it where the firefighters union (and police unions) have captured local government, and captured DB pensions worth millions of dollars where they walk away at age 45 with a $100k+ per year annuity for the rest of their life.
  - Aunche 5y ago
    > I hope even the dumbest 20% of people can understand that $40k per year is not sufficient pay for almost everywhere in the country, much less Baltimore. When I read a comment like this, I'm reminded of how much of a bubble HN is. $40k a year is higher than the median personal income of the US, which is higher than the median personal income of Baltimore. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MEPAINUSA672N https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explore&mprop=income&popt=Person&cpv=age%2CYears15Onwards&hl=en https://datacommons.org/place/geoId/2404000?utm_medium=explo...
    - specialist 5y ago
      Is the median wage a living wage?
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      I know that, and I think it is insufficient pay for a full time career, much less one that requires working far more than 40 hours per week, and take on huge liability working with kids which likely do not have supportive home lives. Also, a better comparison would be to median income of people of working age working in roles with the work and responsibilities of teachers, or the type of work that our ideal teachers are doing instead of teaching, because the pay is so meager.
Guvante 5y ago
There is a difference between having an opinion and lobbying.
- caminante 5y ago
  Why are you making this vague distinction instead of addressing the actual conclusion (on topic)? > Suggesting [x], is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. The root parent shared a values-based opinion with no objective support. Your parent asked for an explanation of the circular conclusion.
  - Guvante 5y ago
    The only thing of substance in the parent was "opinions aren't dangerous". Since that isn't accurate (lobbying can be dangerous) there wasn't anything substantial to respond to.
    - RHSeeger 5y ago
      - Opinions aren't dangerous - Lobbying can be dangerous Those two things are orthogonal. Lobbying is not "an opinion". Lobbying is an attempt to influence the actions, policies, or decisions of government officials. An opinion is just what someone thinks about someone. It is possible to lobby your government official to get them to support your position, but that doesn't make them the same thing.
    - caminante 5y ago
      > "opinions aren't dangerous" [...] Since that isn't accurate [...] At face value, it really sounds like you're accusing people of thought-crimes for having an opinion (e.g. firefighters are overpaid/underpaid/fairly-paid). > (lobbying can be dangerous) And if you think that firefighters are underpaid, then couldn't lobbying (i.e. firefighter unions) possibly produce "good" outcomes? Can someone call that outcome dangerous? This really boils down to you making a value judgment AGAINST lowering firefighter pay. That's what the grandparent comment said and other commenters asked for the reasoning.
- 5y ago

cultofmetatron 5y ago

> $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive Holy shit. IF its anything like when i lived there 5 years ago, thats JUST enough to not be on the poverty line if you're supporting a family

rsj_hn 5y ago
150K is not anywhere close to the poverty line. In fact median household income in San Francisco is 112K. https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/sanfranciscocitycalifornia Honestly this comes off pretty elitist. "Well, George, if you're not earning 400K then you're dreadfully poor!"
- tsuujin 5y ago
  I worked for a company located in SF not long ago, I don’t think most people appreciate just how absurd the cost of living there actually is. The people I worked with lived in fairly small apartments, shared with up to eight co-tenets. It was all they could reasonably afford, and they were well payed tech employees. I bought a new house in the Central Valley for the same pay.
  - rsj_hn 5y ago
    I lived in SF also, and know exactly how much it costs to live there. I also know that because the cost of living is high, many people commute into San Francisco to work, living where it's cheaper. But even in SF, 112K is sufficient for 50% of households, and the median household does not live in a small apartment with eight cotenants. That's also absurd.
    - closeparen 5y ago
      Those households moved in prior to prices going crazy, and have arrangements like mortgages, prop 13, and rent control such that they're still paying outdated prices.
- codingdave 5y ago

cyou111 5y ago

Are farmers not in charge of essential duties? Are people working at electric plant, building houses, plumbing, manufacturing clothing, in charge of essential duties? How should they be paid? There shouldn't be a market price for that? And who among us are performing non-essential duties? What does "essential duties" even mean? Should all so called essential duties be publicly funded? If so, by who? by the remaining of us who are providing non-essential duties?

Pulcinella 5y ago

Yeah reading the articles you posted it’s clear that any amount of public spending is too much for OpenTheBooks. Especially how they point out how much of the school budgets goes to labor costs (labor costs are the largest cost of nearly every organization and business) and how many employees in Dallas ISD and Houston ISD make >$100,000 a year (DISD employees ~22,000 people and HISD ~30,000. Both serve hundreds of thousands of students. So they are just complaining about big numbers. Also DISD already implements the “performance based” pay they suggest. I despise such a system, but the promise is that “if your one of the best teachers, you can actually make $100,000 a year”). Edit: Also the Teacher Retirement System is basically a massive investment firm. The more money it makes for the teacher pension, the less the public has to kick in to make up for any pension shortfalls. You would presumably want to hire the best of the best. Now if that actually happens is debatable, but you absolutely would not want to cut those salaries to the bone.

rkk3 5y ago

> I think my favorite would be this one [3], where they assert that a $150,000 salary in San Francisco is excessive. When it's almost 19,000 public employee's being paid over $150,000 in SF, that kind of does sound excessive especially in the context of a budget deficit. > These public workers are in charge of essential duties. Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. It-least in [3] they never use the word Teacher. They do claim the average Firefighter Comp is 191,000 in SF. Maybe it's not 191K but isn't there some number where people in charge essential duties can be "overpaid" ?

kelseyfrog 5y ago
> that kind of does sound excessive I don't know about you, but I'd have to compare it to cost of living references and public employee's per capita to begin to have an understanding. Even if I had that, there are many other factors I'd want to explore: what's the impact of CoL and commuting? What's the impact of employees not living in the jurisdictional area? What are the structural systems which function to determine salaries, both as an interaction with labor markets and those that have been institutionalized? If I was hired as a consultant to make judgements on SF public spending, in short, I'd do my due diligence.
- rkk3 5y ago
  Is this the bureaucracy defense? I need to be certified, have 30 years experience, and do a 10,000 page analysis before I can have a "legitimate" opinion.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    No, but you presented a false dichotomy.
    - rkk3 5y ago
      They are saying my process isn't "rigorous" enough and needs to follow their complicated rules and ways of doing things, I don't think calling that bureaucratic is a false dichotomy.

nickpp 5y ago

> sway public opinion against public spending in general When public spending inevitably degenerates into nepotism and corruption, that is just cutting the problem at its root. What alternative do you propose?

CyberRabbi 5y ago

> but to sway public opinion against public spending in general The motive behind information should be irrelevant in terms of its veracity but your implied premise here is interesting: advocating to reduce public spending is wrong. Obviously no government can support indefinitely high public spending, so at some point there needs to be a reduction of public spending in the public’s favor lest the government institution go bankrupt. In that case advocating for reduced public spending would obviously be right, not wrong, at least by your apparent moral standards. At what point would you consider it right to reduce public spending? Or rather, what factors would you consider when making a determination as to whether public spending is too high?

jedberg 5y ago

Their motives might be suspect, but their goals are admirable. There is no reason every state payment shouldn’t be public.

specialist 5y ago
Pick your allies carefully. I flirted with a transparency org. Washington Citizens for Open Government. The libertarian minded (Discovery Institute, Toby Nixon, Paul Guppy, so many others) used these nonpartisan good govt orgs to advocate their religion. It was maddening. For instance, simultaneously advocating transparency AND privatization, without irony. Corporations are not subject to public records requests. Many an agency outsourced work to keep the activities away from public scrutiny. Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization. By all means, advocate for better stuff. Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith. The paradox of tolerance, on endless repeat. I have no ideas how to avoid that trap. A large part of my burn out as an activist.
- splistud 5y ago
  "Anyone with a sincere desire for good govt advocates for less outsourcing, less privatization." "Just know the opponents of democratic civil society will always highjack, subvert, project, argue in bad faith." The only bad faith displayed here is yours.
  - specialist 5y ago
    You're saying water isn't wet?

systemvoltage 5y ago

I don't like comments like this. They divert attention from the topic to some underlying motivation (which is suspect). This way, we keep playing tribal politics, instead of being grounded in truth. Textbook whataboutism.

chmod600 5y ago

If two people are making $150000 each, that's a household with $300000 in income. That's not bad for a stable government job. Also, I don't see why it's unfair to call a teacher or firefighter overpaid. If you work for a private business, nobody else knows or cares about your salary. But when you work for government, every taxpayer has a right to complain. Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position.

unethical_ban 5y ago
>Especially for taxpayers who make less than the government position. Why?
Bud 5y ago
Having a "right to complain" doesn't mean that it's accurate, fair, just, or a good idea to complain.
- chmod600 5y ago
  So what's the "dangerous precedent" then?
- SllX 5y ago
  Every dollar paid to the government in taxes is a dollar someone else earned. People are going to complain about that, and it is entirely fair and just to do so. Whether it’s a good idea boils down to where your own politics are, so that’s always going to be subjective.
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    Implying they could have earned that money without the existence of government. Government is an essential service.
    - SllX 5y ago
      It’s not implying anything. That is literally how taxes work. See income taxes: A compensatory agreement between employer and employee is I pay you $X for work. The government then levies a percentage of that money for itself. You can see that on your paystub. You’re not paid $X and an amount equal to a percentage of $X is then donated to the government, that percentage comes directly from your compensation. It’s a revenue stream for governments, sure, but how much revenue a government needs is determined by what policies a government has in place, their obligations to pay employees and officers, and what additional services the government offers. The politics is all around that stuff, but a tax is still a taking of the money that someone else earned to pay for all that, including to pay public employees.

jameslk 5y ago

> I also want to note that the goal of the organization behind this article is not transparency, but to sway public opinion against public spending in general. They might spin their findings into something you dislike, but consider that other journalists and researchers could have access to these records to bring other useful insights to the public. Isn't this the whole point of maintaining a healthy democracy (i.e. the fourth estate)?

stephen_cagle 5y ago

Sure, but I would be happy to team with people whom I personally disagree with if the end result is more transparency. Transparency feels like one of those necessary things for functioning democracy. Aside. I think public services, which are not subject to market forces, should be required to be easily auditable. The tradeoff you make for being a government monopoly is that any citizen should have the right to inspect it.

Aunche 5y ago

While I agree with you that the motives of of this organization are suspect, nobody really seems to care about government inefficiency aside from anti-government people. Raising these concerns from the left is frowned upon because it weakens you politically. As a result, I think that the government is falling into a trap where they think that the best way to solve a problem is to throw money at it.

systemvoltage 5y ago
I am left leaning and I want the government to do more with the same amount of funding. Anyone that opposes this belief is perpetuating dysfunctional state of affairs - left, right, libertarian, whatever. It won't be too long I'll lose interest in the party if they don't fix things. I pay a lot of taxes in Alameda county and I am thinking about leaving this place precisely because of how horribly run this local government is.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Why is it badly run, can you find someone who could do it better?
- colpabar 5y ago
  A common response to your contingency plan is “oh great, another californian is going to come here and vote for politicians who will turn our state into california.”
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    A common response to my contingency plan here is "oh great, another Californian leaving for Fascist trumpers and Qanon loonies" :-) I am changing. I might be voting for Republican (local) representatives for the very first time if they're not too crazy and have rational mediated approach, or centrist Democrats for that matter. Most Republicans I've talked to including my college friends reject Trumpism, but also reject toxic Berkeley's wokeness. So, I am in the same boat it feels despite of different labels. It was actually eye-opening talking to some old friends with whom I used to disagree in college, but now we're more mature and in our late 30's - and far more rational about things.

RHSeeger 5y ago

> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. Saying that one should never consider a firefighter or teacher overpayed sets a dangerous precedent. Sure most of them are not, maybe even all of them, but if a situation is found where some _are_ overpayed, then it should not be bad to discuss it.

fjudehrhdrc 5y ago

I'm not really sure I see the relevance of this extra information beyond pre-biasing people. If transparency makes your spending look bad to voters it's not the transparency advocate's fault it's yours.

llsf 5y ago

Regardless of their agenda, the data should be public. Once it is public, we can argue about what is needed or too expensive. And the best reasoning should win.

WalterBright 5y ago

> One article in their website suggests tying education spending to performance What's wrong with that? That's how markets work, and they work well.

manuelabeledo 5y ago
> That's how markets work, and they work well. You haven't been paying much attention to markets lately, then. Also, there are things that shouldn't be treated as a market. Education is one of them, unless the goal is to exacerbate inequality.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The general mediocrity of the public school system suggests otherwise. It exhibits all the classic problems with centralized government control. The current attempt by it to achieve equality by eliminating testing and gifted programs is mind-boggling.
lalaland1125 5y ago
Tying education spending to performance is very difficult because student performance is primarily due to socioeconomic factors, and not the school. In the worst case, teachers at inner city schools who have the hardest jobs get paid the least since their students do the worst.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  That's a good point. So the performance part of their pay can be set to be relative to that of other teachers in the same school.
elteto 5y ago
One issue is that schools in disadvantaged areas tend to already have bad performance, and if you tie spending to performance results they will in turn receive even less funds, which will cause them to fall even more behind and then get even worse results, and so on the cycle goes. It’s a negative feedback loop.

yumraj 5y ago

> Suggesting that a firefighter or a teacher are "overpaid", is ridiculous and sets a dangerous precedent. Why? It is perfectly fair for a taxpayer to question public spending, including for salaries. It is when we stop questioning, or start making statements that we should not question something, that we end up with a situation that spending go out of whack since there is no oversight. BTW, that is exactly what happens in the case of CEO compensations also. Secondly, regarding $150K+ salaries for teachers, how do these salaries compare to the salaries of fresh Asst. and Associate Profs at Universities. Many of them are paid lower I believe, for example Assistant Prof. at UC Berkeley seems to make about $100K [0]. So, there needs to be some oversight around teacher salaries also to make sure that the salaries are actually going to well educated competent teachers and not the ones with some random degree from the University of Phoenix or similar. Education and experience in teachers should be rewarded and the salaries should not be flattened. EDIT: To add, there are student evaluations for Profs at all Universities. Where are the student/parent evaluations of public school teachers? How are they graded? How are they promoted? Assessment results? If so that is not the correct method, since IMHO it depends more on the parents than it does on teachers. I'll hypothesize, put a bad teacher from a crappy school district in a currently great school district and I guarantee the scores will not change much, if at all. [0] https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-professor-salary-SRCH_IL.0,11_IC1164021_KO12,31.htm https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/uc-berkeley-associate-pro...

dfinninger 5y ago
Teachers do not make 150k in SF. The pay schedules are public [0]. If you’re comparing entry level professorship at UC Berkeley, then the highest paid position for a first-year teacher with the maximum number of extended education credits (since I assume you need a higher degree for professorship) is 69k. [0] https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/labor-contracts-mous-and-salary-schedules https://www.sfusd.edu/information-employees/labor-relations/...
fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
A professorship is a prestige position that’s subject to extreme competition. Berkeley can get away with paying their faculty barely enough to survive because every newly minted PhD dreams of becoming a professor. The same isn’t true of a grade school teaching job. People aren’t lining up to babysit a bunch of misbehaving kids.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

The worst possible (or close to) solution to keep "anti guvernement spending" activists away is keeping your spending secret. "CALIFORNIA SPENT $20 MILLION ON PAPERCLIPS LAST YEAR, THAT IS TOO MUCH" > No we did not. "SHOWS US THE BOOKS. HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS DID YOU BUY AND FROM WHOM" > No that is secret. "IT CANT BE YOU ARE REQUIRED TO SHOW US HOW MANY PAPERCLIPS" > Well we can, but it is too much work, so no. Governments should strive for transparency and be able to admit errors if any are made.