A Portland transit union leader says his members have been “victimized” by a free-market group that posted their salaries on line. But who is the real victim here: the people collecting the salaries or the people whose taxes pay the salaries even if they never ride transit?
Back in June, a free-market group in New York posted salaries for all government workers in that state, leading the New York Times to calculate that more than 8,000 New York City transit workers earn more than $100,000 a year. Portland’s TriMet has only about 100 employees who are paid more than $100,000. Most are administrators, but at least one is a bus driver and several work in maintenance.
Of course, New York’s MTA has 70,000 employees compared with about 2,600 who work for TriMet. The list of TriMet salaries also lists $18,540 in benefits for most employees, but this does not count unfunded pension liabilities that the agency has incurred for each employee.
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One left-wing blogger suggests that Oregon’s Cascade Policy Institute is hypocritical for criticizing high TriMet salaries when the director of that institute (and a leading TriMet critique), John Charles, himself earns more than $100,000 per year. Charles responds that the institute is funded by voluntary donations, not involuntary taxes, and that his fringe benefits amount to only about $3,000, not $18,000 (or more, counting unfunded liabilities). Charles didn’t say, but his duties include fundraising and administration in addition to advocating public policies, so his salary should be compared with the director of TriMet (who earns $247,000), not a bus driver’s.
Congressional staff salaries have been on line for several years now. Government pay is public information, so no one should complain if someone posts those numbers on the web. While it may be true that a bus driver has to work a lot of overtime to earn more than $100,000 a year, it is also true that union rules often make it difficult for transit agencies to hire more employees so they won’t have to pay more overtime. The main cause of the Los Angeles transit strike in 2000 was the transit agency’s plan to hire more workers so it wouldn’t have to pay as much overtime.
People who are paid by the public shouldn’t be upset when the public interested in how much they are paying them. For the record, the Antiplanner earns considerably less than $100,000 a year, none of which comes from anyone’s tax dollars.
As a person who makes volunatry contributions to a number of organizations, transparancy regarding the compensation of the directors, board members, and fund raisers makes a lot of sense. A couple of groups track the agregate numbers of the pecentage of contributions going to fund raising and administration versus the stated mission of the organization.
Boys Town in Omaha was one of the biggest scandals in charatable giving with a very small percentage of donations being spent on the supposed beneficiaries.
An interesting piece on federal salaries:
http://www.npr.org/2010/11/11/131250179/gop-eyes-cutting-federal-bureaucracy-to-save-money
The recent outrage over public sector salaries and benefits is just the beginning of the long conflict ahead. It’s not envy that drives public anger but the fact those raking in the money are also the ones responsible for many of our fiscal problems. Why are we paying so much to those who do so little and do it poorly?
For years we have heard that governments must pay well to get the best people yet the best haven’t performed to the promised levels. We must now rethink how we compensate employees and managers in the public sector and pay only what is necessary rather than what puts us at parity with others. That sort of thinking ratcheted up salaries well beyond was fair.
The government monopoly has acted as you might expect a monopoly to act. Bloated, inefficient, and deaf to those it should be serving. It’s no longer time to tinker around the edges of reform but instead a complete reform is what’s needed.
Steve,
See my link above. Out of the TriMet context, most government employees are paid poorly compared to their private sector counterparts. Government lawyers, doctors at Walter Reed, heavy equipment operators are all paid less than their private sector peers.
As for “It’s not envy that drives public anger but the fact those raking in the money are also the ones responsible for many of our fiscal problems. Why are we paying so much to those who do so little and do it poorly?” the exact same criticism can be applied to the financial sector CEO’s, hedge fund managers, GM, Bernie Madoff, insurance company executives and the likes.
Overcompensation is overcompensation, whether public or private.
Your new Policy Analysis ‘Fixing Transit’, The case for Privatizatiion is out standing.
I am picking up 100 copies today from printers to circulate to Valley Transit Authority, City, paper, etc.
Save your money for distributing to those with staff, esp those with staff educated in econ or rhetoric (or liberal arts).
DS
Randall, I welcome the criticism, but if you interpret my post as a suggestion that Charles shouldn’t be taking home $100,000, you’ve misread the post, in which I noted that Charles probably deserves his $100,000.
I like and admire Charles.
My point, as stated in the post, was that employers who pay well attract good employees. TriMet pays its operators quite well. If it pays less well, it will tend to attract lower-quality operators. This is a point that I feel gets ignored.
In general, I think it’s important that coverage of this $100,000 bus driver confront the unstated implication that a highly experienced bus driver who works an average of 60 hours per week does not deserve $100,000.
Antiplanner,
You’re not paid enough! Especially compared to your boss, Ed Crane, who pulled down $670,000 (3 times the next highest compensated Cato employee). Ask for a raise :).
I believe in freedom of assembly, but employees be they private or public shouldn’t make unreasonable requests from their employers.
Though at least city bus drivers are productive members of society vs. O’Toole and John Charles who are counter productive & destructive members of society.
Not surprising. While I languished as a fed temp worker, my permanent friends had it made. One recently moved from Alaska to Oregon, all on the government dime. They paid many thousands of dollars for people to pack his belongings, including his car, ship them, and unpack them. He takes trips on the government dime and gets per diem. He then takes side trips in the middle of his details to exotic locations, like Belize, and gets per diem for those, too! He’s milking the system for all its worth.
http://www.cascadepolicy.org/overview/
CPI ain’t no for-profit private enterprise
Portland Afoot is right to criticize someone making over $100k while working for a NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION and its gubmint tax deductions it receives.
Shame on Tri-Met too. I think it needs to get a hold of its greedy union that puts compensation over service.
Both groups can suck it in my book.
In a market oriented economy, people usually get paid the marginal value of what they produce. To a large degree, this does happen in the United States, but we also have to remember that a decent chunk of America’s economy is not market oriented, but rather in the political economy, and the rule there is whether people can be politically successful in securing themselves rewards, rather than be paid their market value.
Now then, if a local government transit agency bus driver gets paid $20 per hour to drive around a 40 foot, $500,000 bus that was paid for by taxpayer monies, the real question is not whether this is the amount of money it takes to attract someone to drive that bus around, but rather what exactly is it that the bus driver is producing? The typical government transit agency bus probably carries around two passengers per mile that the bus travels. Is this worth paying someone $20 per hour to do?
So, if our dear $20 per hour transit agency bus driver decides to work the taxpayer over and work 12 hours per day, six days per week, raking in 32 hours of overtime at $30 per hour and pulls in $1,760 per week (40 hours x $20 per hour + 32 hours x $30 per hour), the real question for state policy is this: is this bus driver actually producing $1,760 worth of services, or is this bus driver merely living large off the taxpayer dime?
One clue that we can look to is to examine what commercial truck drivers make, delivering goods in 18 wheelers around the country. Another is to ask private jitney operators or taxi drivers how much money they make. Then we can start to get an idea of what it is that transit agency workers are really worth.
This idea should be replicated all the way across the board when it comes to government. If government is getting more expensive, are the marginal dollars we are spending doing anything of value? If they aren’t – and there’s a strong argument to be made that they aren’t – then we shouldn’t be growing government. We should be cutting it down.
As for the Antiplanner’s earnings, the AP writes books, lectures, and studies. Historically, from Socrates to today, intellectuals never made much money. It is only in recent world history that intellectuals did so, when it became important to groups of people to get academics or intellectuals to justify statism, that intellectuals started to make lots of money.
“As for the Antiplanner’s earnings, the AP writes books, lectures, and studies.”
All VOLUNTARY transactions, no less. Anyone who states otherwise is a village idiot and should be put on ignore using the appropriate plugin.
Frank, that’s bullshit and you know it!
O’Toole gets a lot of financing from Koch Oil.