Aug. 18, 2010: Comparing City Pay Scales with Private Business Shows City Employees Earn More

By Carolyn Schuk

A comparison of 30 City of Santa Clara salaries to those of private businesses appears to validate a Santa Clara County Civil Grand Jury finding that municipal salaries are "artificially high and out of sync with market trends."

The Weekly compared 30 Santa Clara city salaries with those 

for similar private sector job titles at the compensation comparison 

site, Salary.com.

U.S. census data backs up that assertion, reporting that median pay for workers in the public sector is almost $6,000 higher than that for workers in the private sector.

The Grand Jury's 2010 study, "Cities Must Rein In Unsustainable Employee Costs" analyzed 15 South Bay cities and found consistently increasing employee compensation in the face of plummeting revenues and declining city services.

"Salary and wage increases do not reflect changes in economic conditions," the report said. "Even with minimal inflation, yearly COLAs [cost of living increases] are granted with little bearing on the actual increase in cost of living or market conditions." Cities typically peg their compensation packages to other local municipalities, the report continued, are resistant to comparing themselves with private businesses.

Certainly, in some cases public-private comparisons are impossible. Fore example, private businesses don't have police chiefs. However, private businesses do have Information Technology, Accounting, Public Relations, Engineering and Human Resources departments.

The Weekly looked at City 30 job titles and compared municipal salaries with national ranges for private business, using data from the 2010-2011 City Budget and the compensation research company Salary.com.

We found that 20 of the selected salaries (two thirds) Santa Clara is paying higher salaries than three quarters of private businesses across the U.S. – in other words, topping the 75th percentile. The range spanned from slightly more to 251 percent higher than the 75th percentile average.

However, these findings weren't universal. For example, the City's top website executive comes in slightly higher than industry's 25th percentile for the same job. And At $34,606, a Santa Clara street maintenance foreperson trails even the lowest 10 percent of construction coordinators in private industry.

The Weekly's findings also show:

• The City's Accounting Manager earns $142,985, while only 10 percent of corporate accounting division managers make more than 100,653. 
• The City Librarian earns $186,685, while 90 percent of university library directors earn $118,619 or less. 
• 90 percent of corporate executive assistants are paid $61,754 or less, while the executive assistant to Santa Clara's City Manager earns $101,993. 

City salaries are listed in the annual city budget, starting at page 60.