More Money, More Problems
Monday, July 20th, 2009 By Lynn WalshThe City of Columbus seems to have found itself in a tough spot; an $80 million budget hole on one side and citizens needs on another. The solution, according to city leaders, is to raise the income tax.
According to the Economic Research Service the median household income in Ohio is $46,645. In Columbus it is even less than that, $37,897. The per capita income in the city is less still, $20,450.
City of Columbus employees are a little better off it seems. The median income for the almost 10,000 people employed by the City is $53,059.34. That includes overtime pay but does not include pension, retirement, or benefits.
Total overtime pay for City of Columbus employees in 2008 totals more than $28 million. More than 150 employees made more than $25,000 in overtime last year. Those same employees represent 65% of the total overtime paid by the City of Columbus in 2008.
In the spirit of transparency, the Buckeye Institute requested a salary database from the City for all City of Columbus employees. The City Auditor’s Office answered our request with .pdf documents detailing salary information including total overtime and “other” pay.
To make it easier to navigate through, the Buckeye Institute has converted the file into a Microsoft Excel document that can be downloaded and searched.
http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/docs/XPP0947_YTD_2008.xls
The Buckeye Institute will be posting a series of stories related to the information found above in the hope of informing all Ohioans.
July 20th, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Great work, Lynn!
July 26th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
On the corner of South Champion and East Broad the city has ripped-up the pavement, dug a hole and completed repairs to water leaks more times than I can count! (at least 8 in the last four years)
There is presently another repair operation in progress now!
Perhaps we need to find a city engineer that understands budgets and long term repairs! Do it once right will save $10’s of thousands down the road.
OR, lets contract out our engineering services to a for-profit organization that understands the bottom line!
In the mean-time; we have 10 city employees watching one guy in the hole!
July 27th, 2009 at 10:28 am
[...] More information regarding the employee salary database can be found here. [...]
July 29th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
There is another reason why there raising taxes in Columbus, because of the Claus in the police contract.It states after 7-years they have a choice to do desk duty or street duty,and most pick desk duty.That why 70% of Columbus police are doing desk duty,at around hundred thousand a year.If Columbus police didn’t that Claus they wouldn’t need to hire more cops,which would save the city money. And that’s why they have a shortage of police doing street duty. Also they need 6-helicopters,to pick up the slack,of less police on the streets in Columbus. Also the cities that surround Columbus call the police helicopters to help them out.