Steven Greenhut on Excessive Public Pay
“The art of government is to make two-thirds of the nation pay all it possibly can pay for the benefit of the other third,” mused Voltaire. Even that cynical French Enlightenment writer couldn’t imagine what would transpire one day in California, where a portion of the mere 15.3 percent of the public that works for government has gotten the rest of the public to pay for an eye-popping level of compensation.

The latest data — revealed in a December update to the controller’s “Government Compensation in California” Web site — provides fodder for outrage. There’s a fire battalion chief in a small Bay Area suburb receiving a one-year total compensation package that costs $494,000 and city managers in modest-sized burbs (Temecula, Menifee, Carlsbad, Buena Park, Fountain Valley) receiving pay-and-benefit packages of nearly a half-million bucks and more in 2012.

We see a list of employees in fiscally troubled cities — Stockton, San Bernardino, Vallejo — with total earnings in the $200,000 to $300,000 range. ...