Lynn Walsh

A story written for The Buckeye Institute:

More Money, More Problems
Monday, July 20th, 2009 By Lynn Walsh

The City of Columbus seems to have found itself in a tough spot; an $80 million budget hole on one side and citizens needs on another. The solution, according to city leaders, is to raise the income tax.

According to the Economic Research Service the median household income in Ohio is $46,645. In Columbus it is even less than that, $37,897. The per capita income in the city is less still, $20,450.

City of Columbus employees are a little better off it seems. The median income for the almost 10,000 people employed by the City is $53,059.34. That includes overtime pay but does not include pension, retirement, or benefits.

Total overtime pay for City of Columbus employees in 2008 totals more than $28 million. More than 150 employees made more than $25,000 in overtime last year. Those same employees represent 65% of the total overtime paid by the City of Columbus in 2008.

In the spirit of transparency, the Buckeye Institute requested a salary database from the City for all City of Columbus employees. The City Auditor’s Office answered our request with .pdf documents detailing salary information including total overtime and “other” pay.

To make it easier to navigate through, the Buckeye Institute has converted the file into a Microsoft Excel document that can be downloaded and searched.

http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/docs/XPP0947_YTD_2008.xls

The Buckeye Institute will be posting a series of stories related to the information found above in the hope of informing all Ohioans.