SHOCKINGLY HIGH GOVERNMENT SALARIES RAISE QUESTIONS ABOUT LOCAL TAX HIKES

By Tim Bittle, Chief Counsel

As local governments demand that voters approve higher taxes, we thought it would be interesting to see how they’re spending the tax dollars you already give them.

For example, there nearly was a $20 billion Bay Area Housing Bond, called Regional Measure 4, on the November ballot in the nine Bay Area counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma. Bonds are debt, repaid by placing new charges on property tax bills.

The bond proceeds would have been administered by the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which does not build or provide housing, or have any expertise in building or providing housing. All of the money would have been doled out as grants to local governments and other agencies.

However, Regional Measure 4 was withdrawn from the ballot after polling showed it would lose.

The greatest need of most local governments is not to build more housing, but to balance their budgets — budgets bloated with high employee salary, health insurance and pension costs.

Public employee salaries and benefits are public record. To illustrate where bond proceeds might end up, HJTA hand-counted how many public employees in the nine Bay Area counties (including their cities) are compensated $300,000 or more per year.

The total shocked us. In just the Bay Area, more than 11,000 county and city employees receive $300,000 or more in annual compensation. In fact, a large percentage of that 11,000 receive more than $400,000 per year. And 13 of those public employees receive more than $1 million per year.

As one might expect, the high population jurisdictions had the greatest number of employees in the $300K Club. For example, Santa Clara County and the City of San Francisco each had well over 2,500 employees in the $300K Club.

On the other hand, there were some pleasant surprises. For example, despite the high cost of living in Marin County, some of its cities had the fewest public employees in the $300K Club. Tiburon had two, the cities of Fairfax, San Anselmo, Ross, Larkspur, and Belvedere each had only one, and Corte Madera had zero.

Taxpayers should keep the pressure on!