In some places, cities pay two or three times the base salary for one person-By Jarrett Skorup
In cities around Michigan – including those in severe financial trouble – taxpayers are paying large amounts of money in overtime and extra pay.
In some cases, cities pay two or three times a typical salary for just one person to do a job.
Some recent stories from Michigan Capitol Confidential highlight the problem:
- The president of the union representing supervisors and managers in the Flint water department earned $161,000 in 2016 and $149,000 in 2017. In both years, his base salary was roughly one-third his gross pay. The rest came from overtime, “standby” time, and union release time.
- Several other employees in Flint had similar situations in 2017. One operator foreman earned $117,000, more than half from overtime. The other operators in the water department made $107,000, $96,000 and $82,000 . Their base salaries were between $56,000 and $60,000 that year.
- A maintenance worker for the Detroit People Mover elevated train collected nearly $175,000 – more than his general manager – in 2017. His base salary was $57,000. There were 11 employees paid six figures by the entity and nearly all of them had base salaries between $45,000 and $60,000, with the rest of their pay coming from overtime.
- In Ann Arbor, police officers earn one-third or more of their total pay as overtime. One detective spiked his pension payment by boosting his final year’s compensation by nearly $50,000. Other employees used payments for unused compensation, vacation and sick time to do the same.
- In Grand Rapids, 26 city employees made more than $20,000 in overtime last year. Through overtime, 378 employees were able to push their pay to more than $80,000.
So why are public entities paying so much money to one person when they could hire an extra person instead?..."
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