Protection at a High Cost
by Lynn Walsh on Jul.20, 2009, under What's New
The Division of Police is the biggest personnel cost for the City of Columbus. It represents over 31% of total personnel costs in 2008, totaling over $166 million.
The Division of Police employed over 2,300 people last year. More than 950 of those employees earned more than $75,000 in 2008; that is more than 40% of the people employed by the Division of Police. 97% of those earning more than $75,000 were police officers.
A number of Division of Police employees are making even more than that, 150 employees took in more than $100,000 in 2008. More than 90% of those employees were police officers.
79% of employees in the Division of Police earned more than the median household income in Columbus. The percentage of police officers making more than that is even higher, 93%.
Employees in the Columbus Division of Fire are seeing plenty of green as well. Over 800 employees in the fire division took home more than $75,000 last year. More than 120 of them earned more than $100,000.
More than 1,500 employees in the fire division took home “other” pay that was more than $1,000. 20% of the total money paid toward Columbus Division of Fire salaries went to overtime or “other” pay last year.
October 8th, 2009 on 5:50 am
Your comments and observation are accurate. If people are making $200,000 per year, they will fight hard to protect their money and they have the means to do so. How do you propose to impact change? It sounds like the accounting and time charging process are conviently unclear and support the “other pay”. This is no different from the CEOs that have a salary on $1 and $200,000,000 in stock and bonus.
The steps to change this culture are not easy. If you are a team player in this game everybody gets their extra pay and the game continues.
2 actions must be taken: change the accounting and public disclouser standards and cut off the gravey train. Next budget cut proposal, stop the politics of “cutting fire and police will place your kids in danger”.
If you can, collect the data of what all these charges are for. I suppect It will show a good deal of activity that does not add up to much.
March 29th, 2010 on 3:04 pm
Mark,
Thank you for the comments! I like your suggestion of collecting more data to see what the charges are all for…that is an interesting project that if I have time to do I would thoroughly enjoy!
Lynn Walsh
Lynn.K.Walsh@gmail.com