Over the years, I’ve shared some outrageous examples of overpaid bureaucrats.
- The chief bureaucrat of a low-income California city getting almost $800,000 per year.
- Cops in Oakland getting average compensation of $188,000.
- A school superintendent in New York raking in more than $500 thousand of annual compensation.
- A Philadelphia bureaucrat, after working only 2-1/2 years, nailing down a guaranteed pension of $50,000 per year.
- A New York school bureaucrat simultaneously getting a $225,000 salary and $300,000 pension.
- California taxpayers being forced to pay a fired bureaucrat $550,000 for unused vacation time.
- An employee of the New Jersey Turnpike system raking in annual compensation of $320,000.
Hopefully we’re all disgusted when insiders rig the system to rip off taxpayers. And I suspect you’re not surprised to see that the worst example on that list comes from California, which is in a race with Illinois to see which state can become the Greece of America.
Well, the Golden State has a new über-bureaucrat. Here are some of the jaw-dropping details from a Bloomberg report.
The numbers are even larger in California, where a state psychiatrist was paid $822,000, a highway patrol officer collected $484,000 in pay and pension benefits and 17 employees got checks of more than $200,000 for unused vacation and leave. The best-paid staff in other states earned far less for the same work, according to the data.
Wow, $822,000 for a state psychiatrist. Not bad for government work. So what is Governor Jerry Brown doing to fix the mess? As you might expect, he’s part of the problem.
…the state’s highest-paid employees make far more than comparable workers elsewhere in almost all job and wage categories, from public safety to health care, base pay to overtime. …California has set a pattern of lax management, inefficient operations and out-of-control costs. …In California, Governor Jerry Brown hasn’t curbed overtime expenses that lead the 12 largest states or limited payments for accumulated vacation time that allowed one employee to collect $609,000 at retirement in 2011. …Last year, Brown waived a cap on accrued leave for prison guards while granting them additional paid days off. California’s liability for the unused leave of its state workers has more than doubled in eight years, to $3.9 billion in 2011, from $1.4 billion in 2003, according to the state’s annual financial reports. …The per-worker costs of delivering services in California vastly exceed those even in New York, New Jersey, Illinois and Ohio.
Actually, it’s not just that he’s part of the problem. He’s making things worse, having seduced voters into approving a ballot measure to dramatically increase the tax burden on the upper-income taxpayers.
I suppose the silver lining to that dark cloud is that many bureaucrats now rank as part of the top 1 percent, so they’ll have to recycle some of their loot back to the political vultures in Sacramento.
But the biggest impact of the tax hike – as shown in the Ramirez cartoon – will be to accelerate the shift of entrepreneurs, investors, and small business owners to states that don’t steal as much. Indeed, a study from the Manhattan Institute looks at the exodus to lower-tax states.
The data also reveal the motives that drive individuals and businesses to leave California. One of these, of course, is work. …Taxation also appears to be a factor, especially as it contributes to the business climate and, in turn, jobs. Most of the destination states favored by Californians have lower taxes. States that have gained the most at California’s expense are rated as having better business climates. The data suggest that many cost drivers—taxes, regulations, the high price of housing and commercial real estate, costly electricity, union power, and high labor costs—are prompting businesses to locate outside California, thus helping to drive the exodus.
Yet another example of why tax competition is such an important force for economic liberalization. It punishes governments that are too greedy and gives taxpayers a chance to protect their property from the looter class.
[…] California, of course, where fleecing taxpayers has become an art form for some bureaucrats (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and […]
[…] Putting lifeguards to shame, one state employee in California raked in more than $800,000 in one […]
[…] A state psychiatrist getting $822,000 of annual compensation. […]
[…] humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon speculates on how future archaeologists will view the state. This Michael Ramirez cartoon looks at the impact of the state’s class-warfare tax policy. And this joke about Texas, […]
[…] humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon speculates on how future archaeologists will view California. This Michael Ramirez cartoon looks at the impact of the state’s class-warfare tax policy. And this joke about Texas, […]
[…] I hope bureaucrats in New Jersey, California, and Illinois don’t read this article. They might get some additional ideas of how to pillage […]
[…] I suppose taxpayers should count themselves as being lucky since Nowicki’s salary was a mere pittance compared to the $516,000-per-year deputy police chief in San Francisco. Or the $800,000-plus received by a state-employed psychiatrist. […]
[…] On another topic, I’ve written several times about the excessive pay and special privileges of bureaucrats in […]
[…] humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon speculates on how future archaeologists will view California. This Michael Ramirez cartoon looks at the impact of the state’s class-warfare tax policy. And this joke about Texas, […]
[…] humor, this Chuck Asay cartoon speculates on how future archaeologists will view California. This Michael Ramirez cartoon looks at the impact of the state’s class-warfare tax policy. And this joke about Texas, […]
[…] A state psychiatrist getting $822,000 of annual compensation. […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just one […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just […]
[…] migration data is particularly powerful, and it’s one of the reasons why California’s class-warfare tax policy is so suicidal and why Texas is growing so rapidly. As I’ve said many times before, tax competition is a […]
In the Obama administration, government has shrunk by almost every measure.
I find it difficult to say a woman’s retirement funds are “bigger government.” We shouldn’t sabotage our older people, and society, on an altar of “small government.” America should not be crucified on a cross of small government.
[…] A state psychiatrist getting $822,000 of annual compensation. […]
Would that be coveting, or that other one…Thou shalt not steal. I think your ignoring the fact that government excess doesn’t tend to make for more hard workers, it just makes for bigger government.
It just sticks in your craw that any hard-working American can do that, doesn’t it?
The real issue here is that it was only 17, and not 17,000 — or better, 170,000. The conservative-caused collapse of pensions in America is one of the greater crimes against humanity of both the 20th and 21st centuries.
Does it even give you pause that your position on this violates one of the Ten Commandments?
[…] A state psychiatrist getting $822,000 of annual compensation. […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just […]
[…] California government official raking in $822,000 of taxpayer-financed loot in just […]
[…] The $822,000-per-Year Bureaucrat and the Death of California […]
[…] migration data is particularly powerful, and it’s one of the reasons why California’s class-warfare tax policy is so suicidal and why Texas is growing so rapidly. As I’ve said many times before, tax competition is a […]
[…] migration data is particularly powerful, and it’s one of the reasons why California’s class-warfare tax policy is so suicidal and why Texas is growing so rapidly. As I’ve said many times before, tax competition is a […]
Look out Texans; the California liberals will now transform the state of Texas into a liberal bastion of tax and spend voting until you won’t be able to differentiate Texas from Mexifornia. Ain’t it great? Oh. You thought their moving meant they were conservatives? Only for themselves; for everyone else, they’re still liberals who believe in their tiniest of tiny hearts that government is good. You’d do well to educate them upon arrival; otherwise, you’re looking at a ticking time bomb of liberal transformation as they all arrive to take over Texas.
[…] INFO HERE […]
I’m sure you’ve seen this, but others might have missed it.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/335317/embarrassing-metric-disappears-jim-pettit#
It dove tails with your vote with your feet ideas, and the stats that measure it are being dropped. They’re not stopping us yet. Yet.
Perhaps the high tax states such as California will take a lesson from the U.S. government an put into place exit taxes. This will in fact be the states own Berlin walls like the federal government has done.
[…] https://danieljmitchell.wordpress.com/2012/12/11/the-822000-per-year-bureaucrat-and-the-death-of-cali… […]