NY Daily News compiles list of city's top overtime employees

With more than $100,000 in overtime pay, several city employees are making more than the mayor, the NY Daily News reported.

The lean times have yet to catch up with city government's bonus babies - scores of workers are still racking up hefty six-figure overtime.

The king of New York overtime remains Pablo Martinez, a Board of Elections senior systems analyst who scored $144,768 in overtime last year. He has been top overtime dog for several years.

Adding his base pay of $91,210, Martinez made $235,978. Not exactly A-Rod money, but it's still almost $11,000 more than the mayor's official $225,000 salary.

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No WONDER They Tried To Keep the Lid On...

Want a GREAT example of why access to records matters? Check out this beauty from Utah...

Pressed for details about bonuses given to Sandy employees in 2004, City Administrator Byron Jorgenson refused.
Bonuses, he and other city officials argued, were a valuable tool for rewarding workers, but best kept secret to avoid creating bad feelings among those who received the extra cash and those who didn't.
But an analysis of Sandy's pay records - finally made public last month under court order - reveals a decades-old system that disproportionately benefits the city's highest-paid employees, including the mayor, administrators, department heads and their top aides.
And Jogenson is the biggest winner of all. In the past five years, he has pocketed $50,500 in bonus pay.

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Salt Lake Trib Wins A Lawsuit Over Records It Should Have Been Handed The Day It Asked For Them...

Isn't it maddening that a fine FOI newspaper like the Salt Lake Tribune has to waste its litigation bullets on stuff that it should simply be handed that day of teh request? Madness!

Overtime and bonuses for city employees are fair game for public inspection, according to a court decision in a lawsuit between Sandy City and The Salt Lake Tribune.

The Tribune in 2004 requested records containing the names, positions, genders, pay and benefits for Sandy City police officers and fire department employees. The city refused to release certain details, claiming that an individual's bonus and overtime records are private information and not subject to the state Government Records Access and Management Act, which lists a public employee's "gross compensation" as a public record.

Sandy City offered to provide one figure reflecting the sum of overtime, bonus and regular pay for each employee, but Tribune reporters had requested a breakdown of total pay.

"Every other city they asked gave them that information," said Michael Patrick O'Brien, attorney for The Tribune.

The State Records Committee in 2005 upheld the Tribune's request, but Sandy City appealed the decision to the 3rd District Court.

In an opinion filed Friday, Judge Robert P. Faust rejected Sandy City attorneys' definition of "gross compensation" as a total sum that does not segregate overtime and bonuses from regular pay - a definition they supported with Webster's Dictionary, Faust wrote.

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