Michigan salary database

LANSING, MI -- The state of Michigan pays more than 47, people to do everything from control prisoners to maintain bridges.

MLive has created a database of state employees' salaries.

The information contained in the database is the expected annual salaries for state employees, based on their base hourly wages. It does not include benefits or other compensation.

An employee's name, position and salary are listed. The information is current as of March, when MLive compiled it through Freedom of Information Act requests and releases under legislative rules from the House and Senate. The governor's office and courts are not subject to FOIA, and not included.

The information does not include the names of Department of Corrections or Michigan State Police employees, which the Michigan Civil Service Commission withheld, citing an exemption within the FOIA law.

To search MLive's database, start typing in a name and select the employee you're searching for. Or, choose a job title from the list and see what everybody in that position makes.

Click here to view the database.

While this information is already public, Rep. Brandt Iden, R-Oshtemo, has a bill proposed in the legislature that would require the state to make salary information easily accessible online. His house bill would require the state Department of Technology Management and Budget to post state employee salary and benefit information online monthly.

"This all comes back to transparency. One of the things that I've been very focused on, and I believe that this legislative body's been focused on, we saw that with the FOIA bills, is creating more transparency in government. And so that's exactly what this bill was intended to do," Iden said in a March interview.

In a fiscal estimate, the Office of Financial Management determined DTMB would need to hire an employee to accomplish this. Posting the information would cost $, in the first year and $, for each subsequent year, the office estimated.

Iden is sensitive to the costs, and is watching efforts like that from the Mackinac Center, a free market think tank that put salaries of state employees hired before online based off pension data earlier this year.

"If there's a way to get this information out there and not charge the taxpayer for it, I'm very supportive of that," Iden said.

The bill was approved by the House Oversight Committee in March, and has not yet been brought up on the House floor.

The bulk of the salary information published today came from the Michigan Civil Service Commission. The Michigan Economic Development Corporation also maintains separate records, and provided salary information via FOIA.

The House and Senate are not subject to FOIA, but the House

lists salary information

on its website and the Senate Business Office voluntarily released it upon MLive's request.

LANSING — Michigan open-government advocates got the jump on lawmakers on Thursday and posted their own database of state employee's salaries — though some of the figures appear to be incorrect.

The searchable database at MichiganGovernmentSalaries.com — built by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Michigan Coalition for Open Government and the Michigan Press Association — includes the names, titles and salaries of nearly , public employees. For state workers, only those hired before and covered by the state employee pension plan are included in the database. (Those hired after have (k)-style retirement plans.)

Related:

Why is crucial FOIA legislation DOA in Michigan's Senate?

House wants more transparency, Senate GOP wary

Subject Michigan Legislature to FOIA? Meekhof says MYOB

As of Thursday afternoon, however, at least some of the numbers appear to be inaccurate. The database says it only includes salary information, but shows hundreds of Department of Corrections employees making more than $,, including one making more than $, Department spokesman Chris Gautz laughed Thursday afternoon and said those figures are way off.

Jarrett Skorup, a policy analyst at the Mackinac Center who submitted the Freedom of Information Act requests used to build the database, could not explain any discrepancies. He said he requested information through the state pension system and asked for "gross salary," including anything included in their "pensionable salary."

"That's what they reported back to us," Skorup said.

That still didn't explain the apparent errors, said Kurt Weiss, spokesman for the Office of Retirement Services. He said there's "nothing that would drive a salary over $,"

The information covers "nearly every school and community college employee, about half of state government workers, and all state police officers and judges," according to a joint news release from the three groups.

"This database can provide information on whether there are disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity, etc.," Jane Briggs-Bunting, founding president of the Coalition for Open Government, said in the news release. "As employers, citizens should know what they are paying their public employees."

The Lansing State Journal is a member of the Michigan Press Association, but was not involved in gathering the data or building the database.

Calling it "the most extensive (database) available for public access," the data includes three years of public employee pay. The groups plan to update the information as it's made available, the news release said.

The salaries were obtained through the state's Freedom of Information Act, but the data dump comes as the state House considers legislation that would make the names, titles and compensation of most state workers readily available online and updated monthly. A House panel last week defeated proposed amendments to the bill that would have also posted pay information for state contractors.

State employee union officials opposed the bill, saying broad disclosure could put state workers — especially those who work in sensitive areas such as Children's Protective Services — at risk.

They also called the bill unnecessary because the information already was available through FOIA and the state Civil Service Commission already posts general salary information online.

Notably, Michigan is one of only two states that exempt lawmakers and the governor's office from disclosure under FOIA. The state House — which also voluntarily posts employee pay information online — recently passed a package of bills that would subject the Legislature and governor to open records laws, but those measure face an uphill battle in the Senate, which does not post employee's pay information.

Contact Justin A. Hinkley at () or [email protected] Follow him on Twitter @JustinHinkley. 

The database

The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Michigan Coalition for Open Government and the Michigan Press Association have posted the names, titles and salary information for , public employees of the state, schools, community colleges, police agencies and judges. The database is available at MichiganGovernmentSalaries.com.

    DISCLAIMER: The information in this database is gathered through public records requests to state and local government entities. We requested the total gross income of public workers and the name, employer and wage information is posted as we receive it.
    Searches by job are incomplete as the data since does not include job titles. To improve overall readability, where the name, employer and/or job were unique, jobs were inferred based on jobs in earlier years. Where an employee held multiple jobs, the job could not be inferred and was left blank.
    The amounts in the database are only for salary, not the cost of other benefits. The data includes the total pay, including regular hours, coaching, summer school, overtime, callback, holidays, leave use, leave payouts, longevity and performances bonuses, etc. The data does not include costs for insurances, payroll taxes, retirement, etc.
    For law enforcement officers, the state denied releasing their names – so for about 15, employees, the name is blank. The state has also denied releasing the names and wages of most executive and legislative employees.