The number of Kansas public employees making six-figure salaries increased nearly 60 percent in three years, the Lawrence Journal-World reported — though it’s not as bad as that sounds. Kansas had 1,179 public employees earning $100,000 or more in 2005, up from 740 in 2002. Some of that increase was because district court judges’ cost-of-living salary adjustments pushed them over the $100,000 mark. And 956 people on the list were Board of Regents system employees, whose salaries often are paid in large part with research grants and other funding, not with state tax dollars. Wichita State University, for example, had 98 employees on the list. Still, given the layoffs at Boeing Wichita and the struggling farm economy, many Kansans likely are thinking that “public servant” is a misnomer.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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19 Comments
Hasn’t also the percentage of public employees realtive to the working population overall increased faster than the non-governmental jobs?
We can’t all just work for the govenment or get paid by them. We become a socialist, if not, a communist state.
Think of the number of lights we could put on bridges all across the STATE for that kind of money!
If you want to attract the best and brightest to the public sector then you must pay them in accordance with what they would get in the private sector.
The idea that every state employeee should be stretching every dollar to the limit and squeezing her/his pennies for blood is partly what’s wrong with the system.
Parents want the best teachers in their schools, they want the best equipped and trained firefighters and cops, but they gettheir bowels into an uproar when the bill is presented.
The old saying is 95% true. You get what you pay for (occasionally on ebay you do better…maybe public servants can be a new ebay category).
Joe Williams – isn’t the fundamental idea of Communism “State ownership of the means of production”? Sounds to me a lot like the Arena, WaterWalk, Eaton, Hyatt …
A rather large proportion of the 98 WSU employees on the list (including myself) earning over $100,000 in 2005 are faculty of the Barton School of Business (yes, where I teach about free markets, and not the alternative economic systems found elsewhere that I don’t accept). I also recognize other names from the engineering school. The same situation also exists for KSU and KU.
Faculty retention has been an issue at WSU. These people (including myself) were hired in a competitive market and can find similar or better pay at another university, and much higher pay in the private sector.
Perhaps a good question to ask is if Phillip Brownlee and others don’t want WSU, KSU, and KU to have business or engineering colleges. Elimating us would reduce most of these “public servants making out as kings”. There’s already enough concern about the continuing brain drain from Kansas to the other states. Where does Kansas really want to stand versus the other 49 states (and the rest of the world)?
My mistake and typo. Meant to say “eliminating”.
“Where does Kansas really want to stand versus the other 49 states (and the rest of the world)?”
Isnt that obvious?
We cant get to the bottom fast enough to suit the wingnuts and the tabor supporters.
I think we are doing a REALLY good job of going where those people want to take us.
Praise god and pass the guns. The promised land of wingnuttia is in sight.
No, KFG, in Kansas it is “praise the ammunition, and pass the lord”.
I know a WSU professor who had the equivalent of 3 full time jobs. To get stuff done she had to wake up at 3:00am to get started soon enough to do what all she had to do.
I am reasonably sure in the vast majority of cases the salaries of WSU profs are bargains.
Thank you.
Yup, this is pretty much a non-story. It’s called “inflation.”
If college professors’ and judges’ salaries went up like the price of gasoline, they’d be happy campers.
If we only spent more money on college professors, our problems would be solved.
Joe, if we only spent more money on college professors, SOME of our problems would be solved. We have a lot more areas that need adequate funding.
Too bad we can’t get everything we want and need and never pay for it, huh?
If we only DIDNT spend more money on college professors, our problems would be solved?
It just goes to show that the governor is convinced that growing government is economic development
It’s the easiest, isnt it Ruby? I mean, other than pandering to the irrigators and calling THAT economic development.
100k isn’t all that much money. I don’t get the outrage.
Money spent for education was obviously wasted on Joe.
Too bad they didn’t have the “ditch digger” track before Joe dropped out of school, so he would have been prepared for SOME career goal at least.
Does anybody know if college coaches salaries are paid by taxpayers or some other source then the 2million that Bill Self gets or the 750′000 that Turegon gets or the equally large salary the the new K-State football coach gets.
I was told that coaches salaries at WSU are internally funded by the athletic department, and that the reason for the assumed delay in the deal for Turgeon’s salary increase to $750K was due the time in finding the willing donors. At least that’s what I was told by a reliable source. However, I have seen the case (at other schools) where athletic department deficits had to be bailed out through from the university’s budget. Where I have usually seen that occur is at universities that were holding onto a money losing football program.
“Where I have usually seen that occur is at universities that were holding onto a money losing football program.”
Heheh, yeah, WSU professor. I wonder how big the debt would have gotten if they HADN’T dumped the football team! THe “Alive in ‘95″ movement had me cringing. . .
BTW, the fact remains that most civil servants make more money than, say, burger-flippers, but not that much.