Public Salaries, Public Access

How the public’s money is being spent needs to be open to
scrutiny and analysis. Otherwise, the potential for abuse is
enormous
The money paid by taxpayers to public employees must be fully accounted for. Every public employee on the payroll must understand that their salary is a matter of public record.

The state Supreme Court affirmed this fundamental tenet of the public’s right to know Monday handing down a ruling that assured salary information for public employees would not be locked away in a City Hall or school district vault behind a cloak of secrecy.

The union representing the Oakland police officers kept the matter before the courts for three years following another newspaper’s request for salary information.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this court ruling. If salaries are secret, how will the people monitor their government?

“Counterbalancing any cognizable interest that public employees may have in avoiding disclosure of their salaries is the strong public interest in knowing how the government spends its money,” Chief Justice Ronald George wrote expressing the gist of the majority opinion.

The ruling will end the cat-and-mouse games local government agencies have played during the last few years with employee salaries.

It’s important, for example, to know what Morgan Hill’s top administrators make, how often they receive raises and how much their benefits are costing the public. We intend to use this information wisely and judiciously in the course of reporting stories that affect our readers and our community. 

Without access to this information, the door for abuse would be left wide open and the taxpaying public would not have the ability to scrutinize or analyze information crucial to making judgments on how our money is being spent.

As a public employee, having your salary information accessible isn’t a comfortable feeling. But it comes with the territory and all employees must understand what the justices re-asserted: There is an overwhelming public interest in the full and complete disclosure of public salary information.  

In making the ruling, the justices showed wisdom and preserved an important facet of the public’s right to know.