What Our Neighbors Are Doing- Pay Raises in Sacramento

Michael McDaniel
April 2008

I just finished reading a couple very informative "Wake up taxpayers" pieces on the Sacramento Bee online.  The first piece HERE allows taxpayers to view the salaries of state employees.  What I found most notable was the number of employees; 367,680.  That number shocked me.   Why, you ask? 

Compare the state of California's revenue of approx $100 billion to the largest publicly traded company Exxon Mobil which has over $360 Billion in revenues. My point is this; how can a private company with over 3 times the revenue also have 1/3 as many employees?   You see, Exxon Mobile has only 100,000 employees (approx), 1/3 as many as the state of California; yet Exxon manages over 3 times the revenue. 

I received an email from a friend this week that identified a link between the size/expense of government and what he called "government pay raises."  He went on to rant about the fact that his family was struggling to make ends meet while government employees continue to get pay raises. Enter the City of Sacramento's recent decision to give 10%+ pay raises to firefighters, story HERE.  This decision comes at the same time the federal government is mailing stimulus checks  to hopefully invigorate a sputtering economy and bleak employment numbers. 

I did not have a good response for his closing question;"what is responsible for the dis-connect, how are tax payer funded employees getting raises while us taxpayers are dying on the vine?"

Comments

[russ]

Mike,

Great question! We are struggling and paying the taxes for those raises. How can we continue to put up with this crap! It is time a change in government!