How we did this: Salem-area government salary database
Oregon state, county, city, college and school district employees are paid with taxpayer funds. And employee salaries are typically the largest expense for a government agency.
But the state has no single place for the public to see how much they are paying those employees, or for employees to see how their salary compares to similar workers for other government bodies.
The Statesman Journal believes in transparency in how government spends public money. Using the power of the state public records law, reporters filed numerous requests to individual agencies to get that data.
The results of those requests, with salary data for more than 76,000 government positions, can be found online at data.statesmanjournal.com/salary/.
The latest posted salary information is for the 2022 fiscal year (mid-2021 to mid-2022). Future years, and additional government entities, will continue to be added.
Salary database: Salary database: Which Salem, Eugene city employees are paid the most?
Which agencies are included?
The data includes workers for the state, Marion and Polk counties, Chemeketa Community College and numerous local cities and school districts.
The Statesman Journal requested detailed salary information for each employee, including annual rate of pay, actual wages and overtime pay.
Some agencies, including Independence and Polk County, provided the public information promptly and at no or little cost.
Some agencies provided only partial information or cited very large fees to provide some of the data. Marion County, for example, told the Statesman Journal it would cost $278.13 for data that would include overtime payments. Silverton, which reported having 54 employees, said it would cost $439.60 for data that includes actual wages and overtime.
What does the data show?
Agencies were asked to provide every employee's name, position, employment status, gross earnings, annual pay, actual wages, hourly rate and overtime pay. The information listed online is the data the government agency chose to provide. If data is missing, it is because the agency did not provide it.
The only changes the Statesman Journal made to the data were to match column titles and order, such as including the name of the agency or spelling out abbreviations.
For each employee, the table may show:
Employment status: This field states whether an employee works full- or part-time.
Annual pay: This is the employee's official annual salary. It may not be the same as the actual wages, as it typically does not take into account overtime, bonuses, furloughs or other factors that might have caused an employee's actual wages to increase or decrease.
Actual wages: This is what the employee was actually paid last year, minus benefits or bonuses. If an employee was hired later in the fiscal year, their actual wages for that fiscal year will be less than what their annual pay states.
Hourly rate: The amount an employee is paid per hour of work. Some employers only provided this for workers paid by the hour, while others also calculated the hourly rate for salaried employees.
Overtime: This amount paid is listed in all cases in which the employer reported it.
Do you see something in the data that merits further investigation? Have a tip about public employees? See something an employer is reporting inaccurately? Email the newsroom at salemnew@gannett.com
This article originally appeared on Salem Statesman Journal: How we did this: Salem-area government salary database
