I guess one simple explanation is that everyone got 29% better at their job or works 29% more hours?

(No, I’m not being serious).

The fact that it is so much higher than any other city makes me question it, although considering Oakland’s pay scales, the figure seems pretty plausible to me.

A note about the data here – all these figures are self-reported by the cities themselves. The source document (I can’t link to it now, as I have very limited access to the internet at the moment, but I’ll try to update with a link next week) has a kind of funny, and somewhat lengthy section about all the steps they take to try and ensure that the numbers are accurate and measurements are consistent for all cities reporting, basically saying they tried to make the process as idiot-proof as possible, but of course something’s always going to slip through the cracks. For example, the person who did the reporting for Oakland, as Robert noted in a comment upthread, apparently didn’t understand the difference between total employment and full-time equivalent employment, which is a pretty basic (and important) distinction.

There’s a study floating around somewhere from the City about the municipal employee pay rates around the Bay Area, which is a much better metric for comparison anyway, and if I remember correctly, Oakland came out quite a bit above average. I’ll try to find that and post it here next week as well.

When city population goes up barely 10% in 10 years, what justification can there be for payroll doubling???? There is absolutely none. Even with inflation adding 40-60% in costs, payroll should have gone up no more than 70%. One-third of the payroll is therefore wasted, as there is clearly no quality improvement in city services.

The bottom line: this city’s government is as addicted to tax revenue as a crack addict. Consider McBush’s response to the price of oil: we must have more supply (off shore driiling) to drive down price, so it doesn’t hurt so much. Instead of what should we do to get off the addiciton to oil.

So the city is going to have a good sized deficit. What’s the solution? Increased taxes, the politicians say plus cut in libraries and police support staff, of course. This city wastes an awful lot of money-and it’s not in the libraries and police technical support staff. The bloated current compensation per employee (if you subtract out the cops and fire) and number of employees since 2000 IS undeniably huge. And don’t forget the compensation data does not include the unfunded pension liability that the politicians are allowing to be shirked: that cost WILL have to be paid and the budgetary implications will be huge.

Nevertheless, I do find the numbers for Oakland to be astonishing. While the 138 FTEs/10,000 residents is far below other comparable cities. the average salary of $7397/month is quite high. Apparently, the highest you can find in the country. As a state employee with 18 years of experience, a BA and MA from two of most prestigious universities in California, and supervising/managerial responsibility for 42 employees and hundreds of millions of dollars in deliverables, I barely make more than the Oakland Average (I stay because I love my job).

My main problem with Oakland is not necessarily the high average salaries, although I am not convinced they are justified, but what it is getting us in city services. If we were getting stellar customer service I would not have any issues. However, having worked with city, county, state and federal agencies throughout California for the past 18 years, I can unequivocally say that the customer service for the City of Oakland is by far the worst of any public agency that I have ever encountered. No doubt there are some very dedicated, honest, hardworking staff (I love the Oakland Police Abandoned Auto Detail). But on the whole, my experience professionally and personally has been nothing but disappointment and frustration with the culture of disrespect, neglect, rudeness, lack of transparency, accountability and knowledge of legal processes and procedures and a general unwillingness to take ownership of problems that the public brings to Oakland City employees/bureaucrats for assistance. Perhaps if the City of Oakland had a pay for performance approach and the ability to actually fire poorly performing employees, similar to the private sector, we could really attract the best and brightest rather than having Oakland government positions serve as a guaranteed public jobs program. The only way to effectively address the looming budget deficit is with staff cuts (unless they want to foist yet another tax increase on us). Unfortunately, as with most public agencies, those with the most seniority in Oakland government will retain their positions and those with the least seniority will be the first cut. This never makes any sense, since it has nothing to do with one’s commitment to their job and has no reflection whatsoever on their job performance.