Friday, April 9th is Tax Freedom Day, when the average American has earned enough to pay Uncle Sam and Uncle Sam’s various relatives what they demand. Ohio is somehow a day ahead of the average, so in honor of the big day tomorrow I thought I’d dig through some salary info for public administrators here in Franklin County. As boring as I am, I ought to make an effort to avoid any talk of numbers or statistics. As stubborn as I am, I won’t!
With employment and the economy in general down for the past year and a half, I wanted to see how the smallest of government big-shots were rewarding themselves relative to 2007 and 2008. Despite widespread populist railing against private industry salaries and bonuses, I expected to see pay increases for the insulated local bureaucrats our tax dollars keep employed. Given some of the things I’ve read recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the data.
A helpful CPA in the Franklin County Auditor’s office responded to my public records request promptly, with salary data on all Franklin County employees from 2007-2010. Download the Excel file if you’d like to check my numbers or do some analysis of your own. I’ll list hourly rates instead of annual salaries, as 2009 contained 27 pay periods instead of the usual 26. Let’s start with the highest branch on the Franklin County tree, shall we?
Commissioner’s Office
Position
2007 Pay
2008 Pay
’08 Raise
2009 Pay
’09 Raise
2010 Pay
’10 Raise
County Administrator
$68.17
$72.33
6.10%
$74.14
2.50%
$74.14
0.00%
Deputy County Administrator
$52.88
$56.10
6.09%
$57.50
2.49%
$57.50
0.00%
Commendably, the two highest-paid administrators in the Commissioner’s office received no pay raises this year. That makes 2008′s 6% increases in their six-figure salaries a little easier to swallow.
Department of Job and Family Services
Job and Family Services (which you’ll notice is under the Commissioner’s office on the county org chart) is more complicated because of new hires, departures, and title changes. I should also note that David Migliore, who was Chief Deputy in the Clerk of Courts office while I was employed there from 2005-2007, is hardly my favorite person. I spent my last 6 months – as a Programmer Analyst 1 doing Programmer Analyst 2 work – waiting to hear back about a pay raise request that Migliore ignored literally until the day I resigned.
Position
2007 Pay
2008 Pay
’08 Raise
2009 Pay
’09 Raise
2010 Pay
’10 Raise
Director (1)
$61.77
$65.53
6.09%
$62.37
(4.82%)
$62.37
0.00%
Assistant Director
(Esther R. Adkins)
$44.64
$47.36
6.09%
$48.54
2.49%
$48.54
0.00%
Assistant Director (2)
N/A
$48.78
N/A
$45.07
(7.61%)
$45.07
0.00%
(1) – Drop in Director’s pay from 2008-2009 reflects a change from Douglas E. Lumpkin to David E. Migliore. I don’t know who decided Migliore should be making around $130,000, but it’s nice that he started at a lower salary than the outgoing Director and didn’t get a raise in 2010.
(2) – In 2008 the Department of Job & Family Services added a new Assistant Director, Anthony S. Trotman. The 2009 data list Trotman as a second Director, salaried at $62.37 – equivalent to a 27.86% raise. Trotman isn’t listed at all for 2010, but the additional Assistant Director position remains.
As I said, this is more complicated than the Commissioner’s Office, where the two highest-paid employees were the same guys with the same titles from 2007-2010. I won’t pretend to understand why a second Assistant Director was added to the Department of Job and Family Services in 2008, but I’ll assume Trotman served as some sort of Interim Director in 2009.
Clerk of Courts
Position
2007 Pay
2008 Pay
’08 Raise
2009 Pay
’09 Raise
2010 Pay
’10 Raise
Chief Deputy (3)
$37.48
$40.74
8.69%
$42.17
3.51%
$45.87
8.77%
David E. Black(4)
N/A
N/A
N/A
$24.96
N/A
$37.22
49.12%
(3) – In 2008, Maryellen O’Shaughnessy was elected Clerk of Courts. When David Migliore departed for the Department of Job and Family Services, O’Shaughnessy brought in Mary Austin Palmer – and immediately gave her a huge raise in a poor economy. Either Mary Austin Palmer is some kind of management wiz, or Maryellen O’Shaughnessy doesn’t think much of the taxpayers’ money. See (4).
(4) – Yes, I skipped down the list of Clerk’s office employees; this observation is too ridiculous to exclude. In 2007, before he departed for Columbus City Council, Hearcel Craig was paid $25.49 an hour as the Clerk’s Director of Customer Service. The position remained unfilled (to no ill effect, so far as I could tell) until David E. Black was hired. In 2009, Black’s salary as Director of Customer Service was $24.96. In 2010, Black’s title changed to Director of Business Operations and his salary increased by nearly 50%. Why, all of a sudden, is it necessary for the Franklin County Clerk of Courts to employ a Director of Business Operations? Isn’t that what the Chief Deputy is for? How does O’Shaughnessy justify creating a $77,625.60 business operations role while also paying her Chief Deputy $95,409.60?
Skimming through the other Franklin County salary information, it looks like our highly-paid bureaucrats are at least politically intelligent enough not to give themselves raises when unemployment in the Columbus metro area is somewhere between 9 and 10 percent. Except for the Clerk of Courts office, which seems to have suffered from John O’Grady’s move to the Commissioner’s office.
Happy Tax Freedom Day!
[Update: Additional follow-up on the Clerk of Courts available here and here.]
“We need to become the party of liberty and freedom,” Ryan argues. “We’re not doing enough. We can do better, and we will — because we have no choice. If we’re going to offer the country a completely different vision, we can’t be Democratic-lite or resign ourselves to be slightly more efficient managers and tax-collectors for the welfare state. We have to break with that and give people a clear and distinct difference.”
Hope and change as defined by President Obama are exactly what all of us wild-eyed conservatives said they’d be – schlocky advertising and accelerated government growth. That’s clearer today than at any other point this past year. Obama has demonstrated no interest in transparency, no patient bipartisanship, no meaningful variation from the leftist playbook of demonizing private employers while promising unsustainable entitlements to “the middle class.”
Congressman Ryan has been at the forefront of the GOP for months, suggesting solutions to America’s domestic problems that don’t require more spending, more IRS agents, more regulation and taxation. The Democrats’ solution to every domestic problem is to throw more of our money at it, which fits perfectly with a foreign policy of shrinking defense spending as yet another way to show our enemies how cuddly and disinterested we are.
Ryan’s speech yesterday on the House floor is an important summary of what the entire Republican Party ought to stand for:
In November we’re going to have very clearly defined options – I hope Ryan means what he says, and I hope he finds no shortage of trustworthy allies in D.C. over the coming months and years.
Were you curious as to whether Ticketmaster is still an awful company? They are!
Tickets at Nationwide Arena are available exclusively through Ticketmaster. That should make it super easy to find tickets, and maybe even translate into reduced service charges for Nationwide events. It doesn’t.
For one, locating seats and figuring out what they’ll cost takes an elaborate hokey-pokey of clicking through calendars and lists. Is the game you’re interested in linked on the Jackets’ home page? I hope you didn’t expect that shiny red “Tickets” button to take you straight to a purchasing page for that game. No, it’s going to drop you on a screen listing all the games, with a separate link for each package deal. If you found a game next month on the Jackets’ site, you’ll have to find it again on Ticketmaster.com before you can search for tickets. If you want to compare prices for a package versus a block of individual seats, you’re going to click roughly 900 times.
And don’t forget! Ticketmaster’s website is so mind-bogglingly handy, they’re going to tack on a convenience charge – but only after you’ve completed the Seat Search Kabuki. Were you buying package seats because of their reasonable advertised price? Sorry, sucker!
When last I complained about the stupid fees Ticketmaster adds to the price of every ticket, it was $4 per ticket to order online. The “convenience” charge has since gone up 50% …in less than a year. Great way to keep people attending events during an economic slump! Charging nearly $200 for $150 worth of tickets is a perfect strategy for getting butts in seats.
The Jackets remain desperate for ticket sales, churning out new package deals – the “Ticket and Meal Deal,” “Guys Night Out,” various promotions around Christmas and New Year’s Eve – while the team stumbles and the organization tries to shake down the taxpayers. Would it make a huge difference if the cheapest tickets weren’t loaded up with a 24% convenience charge? Probably not… but it’d make me less annoyed, and it seems fair to guess I’m not the only one.
After a disappointing new unemployment report, President Barack Obama pushed on Friday for an expanded government program..
No, scratch that – the first half of the first sentence says it all. Unemployment is much worse than President Obama said it would be, so let’s spend more of that stimulus money! Subsidizing green jobs – however the lobbyists and leftists define “green jobs” – is the obvious solution. This is really all Glenn Beck’s fault; if he hadn’t ruined the tenure of sweet, gentle communist Green Jobs Czar Van Jones our economy would be so green right now… you don’t even know!
Speaking of environmental boondoggles, someone remind me to dump all my GE if it gets back around $20. I should’ve learned before I started buying GE that two of the pillars of their business model are:
Lobby for government strangulation of things we don’t make.
Lobby for government funding of things we make that nobody wants to buy.
I read something this fall about the possibility of a “Cash for Clunkers” sort of racket for buying Energy Star appliances starting early 2010. After talking about it a little with my family over Christmas, I thought I’d poke around The Webs to see what the story was.
Each state will run its own rebate program and will be free to select which ENERGY STAR appliances qualify along with the rebate amounts. Plus, any state or local utility district rebates will be added to the federal Cash for Appliances rebate, which could add up to even greater savings for you!
States will submit their application for funding along with their appliance recycling plan to the Department of Energy (DOE) by October 15, 2009. The DOE plans to have funds available by November 30, 2009, so start planning and selecting your new energy-efficient appliance from Lowe’s today.
So at this point we know there’s federal money set aside from that oh-so-successful stimulus bill, but the rebate amounts, processes, and eligible products will vary by state. Or in other words, we know nothing. To the Dispatch! They provided a helpful update in a Consumer 10 report from 12/27:
This month, the agency approved Ohio’s proposal for using its share of the funds: about $11 million.
The state’s program won’t be finalized until the first quarter of 2010, but some details are available:
Ohio will give almost 90,000 rebates to residents who buy qualified refrigerators, dishwashers, washing machines and water heaters from Ohio retailers.
To be eligible for a rebate, an appliance must bear the federal government’s Energy Star label.
Sounds like a decent deal, if you’re in the market for new appliances – rebates for Ohioans will range from $100 to $250. I’m assuming my appliances have been around for as long as my kitchen, which would make them all 14 years old. Will I be “lucky” enough for something to break during this latest ingenious government plan, or will what I’ve got keep on tickin’ for a few more years?
I’d love if we could keep more of our money, instead of being invited into the shifting miasma of loopholes that high earners must constantly navigate. What will the government reward me for buying or selling this year? How can I take advantage of a maximum number of government programs that are paid for with my money, whether I use them or not? These are questions we should never need to ask, but here we are…
I should start an occasional feature about what a bad idea it is to follow the stock markets.
Case 1: Ford Motor Company. When the housing bubble burst last fall and took everything with it, I thought about buying shares of F. I thought about how well Ford should do when people realized the world wasn’t ending and decided to buy new American cars not built by a company teetering at the edge of bankruptcy. Ford bottomed out around $1, but I didn’t have cash and didn’t want to sell something else only to second-guess myself later.
Ford closed today at $9.90 a share. I deftly avoided that tenfold gain!
Case 2:Athersys, Inc. I actually did buy ATHX, a Cleveland company researching adult stem cell therapies, this spring when I was spreading around a little dividend money. I picked up a few interesting penny stocks, partly to diversify my tech-heavy portfolio but mostly for fun. Three hundred of this, three hundred of that, with the hope that more would double or triple than went out of business.
ATHX closed Friday 12/18/09 at $1.00 a share after opening at $1.01 – not too shabby since my cost basis is 64 cents. Yesterday morning, this happened:
Athersys, Inc. (Nasdaq:ATHX) announced today that it has entered into an agreement with Pfizer Inc. (PFE)…
Excellent news! ATHX closed yesterday at $2.40. ATHX closed today at $5.55. Guess which company I bought the least of when I was buying penny stocks in March. When I sold my Cedar Fair shares last Friday, guess how much of that money I invested in what I now know would more than quintuple over the next two days.
Hindsight: A great reason not to dwell on stock prices. Whether I do well or poorly, I always see how easily I could have done better. A bird in the hand, etc. etc…
Let your senators know exactly how you feel about Reid’s health care bill! I sent the following to Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s first term Progressive who continues to support support the Reid bill despite its heap of federal programs being less heap-ish than he would like. You can send a message to Senator Brown via the form at http://brown.senate.gov/contact
How do you feel, Senator, about the fact that Nelson’s support for the health care bill is being purchased at cost to Ohio taxpayers? Will you ask Senator Reid to also dedicate federal funds to the cost of Ohio’s increased Medicaid rolls?
I’m a conservative from rural Ohio, and I’m sure there are few policy positions you and I would agree on. But let’s be frank, there are a lot of Ohioans between us on the political spectrum who will wonder why you’ve supported a massive expansion of D.C.’s power that demolishes the state budget. Why commit political suicide for something voters oppose that also compromises your own wishes? Ask Senator Reid to give you all a Christmas break, and see what Ohioans have to say about this bill.
You won’t have Bob Taft and George Bush to whack around like pinatas in the next election, Senator. This is something you really ought to keep in mind unless you’d like to serve just one term.
I noticed the Senator’s office is in the Hart Senate Office Building… no relation. T-minus 10 days before an aide sends some boilerplate response thanking me for my stupid opinion.
As a Christian it’s difficult to deal with the question of capital punishment. I don’t believe “Thou shalt not kill” is a commandment that extends to governments who provide fair trials, but that’s not something I’m generally confident enough to shout from the rooftops. Then I see a story like this appalling one from Cleveland:
A convicted rapist was charged with multiple murders on Tuesday after police dug up 10 corpses at his home, which produced a stench of death in the depressed Cleveland neighborhood.
That no innocent should ever be put to death by the state is, to my mind, the most convincing argument against the death penalty. So long as we remain human, there will be tragic cases where people are convicted of crimes they did not commit.
Neighborhood residents said they avoided Sowell, who was released from prison in 2005 after serving 15 years for raping a pregnant woman.
Anthony Sowell got a second chance, and he used it to rape and murder women. I can think of no punishment too cruel or unusual, but a series of injections guaranteeing he can never rape or murder again seems to be in order here.
Forget Iraq, Afghanistan, Pah-kee-stahn, Iran, North Korea, Venezu… actually, let’s save time and say “forget foreign policy.” I’m not in the mood to pretend Nobel Laureate Obama has much capacity to shock me when it comes to his dealings with other countries. Why feign disappointment when anyone paying attention knows the progressive position on any foreign policy initiative is, “What can America stop doing wrong so you’ll leave us alone?”
The main concern for President Obama – and maybe an equally troubling issue for Americans – is his dedication to Health Care Reform. President Obama is so serious about increasing the government’s role in health care that he doesn’t have time for opposition, and doesn’t really need anyone in Congress (let alone the public!) to read whatever bill Pelosi and Reid can ram through. From a Wall Street Journal opinion piece:
Washington spent the week waiting for the Congressional Budget Office to roll in with its new cost estimates of the Senate health-care bill, and what a carnival. Behold: a new $829 billion entitlement that will subsidize insurance for tens of millions of people and reduce deficits by $81 billion at the same time. In the next tent, see the mermaid and a two-headed cow.
The political and media classes are proving they’ll believe anything, as they are now pronouncing that this never-before-seen miracle is a “green light” for ObamaCare. (What isn’t these days?) The irony is that the CBO’s guesstimate exposes the fraudulence and fiscal sleight-of-hand underlying this whole exercise. Anyone who reads beyond the top-line numbers will find that the bill creates massive new spending commitments that will inevitably explode over time, and that this is “paid for” with huge tax increases plus phantom spending cuts that will never happen in practice.
Democrats, remember when you’re deriding conservatives for “opposing change” that, while some of us may be doing no more than that, Americans are going to have to pay for this. You’ll never find a majority of people who trust D.C. to do anything that resembles efficiently managing the health care of 300,000,000 people… which is why the White House and Congress will hide behind the latest CBO numbers and work out the details in the Obama-style ‘transparency’ of closed meetings.
More to the point, the only reason why Belgium has gotten away with being Belgium and Sweden Sweden and Germany Germany this long is because America’s America. The soft comfortable cocoon in which western Europe has dozed this last half-century is girded by cold hard American power. What happens when the last serious western nation votes for the same soothing beguiling siren song as its enervated allies?
Emphasis mine. We’re responsible for Obama, Pelosi, and Reid holding the power they have today, and before too long we’re going to find out what that costs.
“The profiles of the people… generally speaking is much closer to what we see among European Muslims,” he said. “They tend to be less well integrated” into mainstream society, and in many cases have faced economic difficulties and unemployment, Bergen said.
If there is a link among the suspects, Bergen said, “it’s a feeling of exclusion from the American dream.”
Emphasis mine. I’m not sure why CNN needs to ask analysts. Isn’t the root cause of terrorism always the same? If only we could wring some more money out of the Haves, the Have-Nots would stop trying to blow things up.
Consider Najibullah Zazi. He can afford gallons upon gallons of explosive reagents. He can pay for a rental car to drive across the country. He has connections in Colorado and in New York. Seems like he and his pals could get by pretty well, if they’d invest their money in something other than bombings and spend a teensy bit less of their time planning the murder of infidels.
But no. If Muslims rich and poor are killing their neighbors all around the world, it only proves that we need to work harder not to exclude people.
Wednesday, 04-07-10, 08:46:19pm 
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