To kick off Sunshine Week, State Controller John Chiang updated his public employee compensation website with the latest wage and benefit data for local special district employees.

The site –publicpay.ca.gov – offers maps, search functions, and custom report-building tools. It also allows users to download raw data for their own research. This update covers calendar year 2012, the fourth full year of data for special districts, as well as other local governments, available on the site.

“In addition to cities and counties, special districts also provide some of the most critical services in local communities throughout California,” remarked Chiang. “The vast majority of special districts have filed their wage reports on time, but I will continue to use my office’s audit authority to make sure this data is publicly available from all districts.”

Special districts are local agencies formed to provide specific services, from health care to public transit. Today’s update adds wage and benefit data for 140,391 special district positions, with more than $6.84 billion in wages paid in 2012. For this update, 96.9% of the State’s special districts submitted information on time.

The Controller contacted more than 100 noncompliant districts late last year, warning them that repeatedly failing to file could indicate a lack of internal controls at the local government, and may be cause for the Controller to initiate an audit.

Since the public pay site’s launch in 2010, it has registered more than 7.3 million page views online. The Controller completed an overhaul of the public website in late 2012, adding additional search, browse, and mapping functions.

The Controller’s office expects to make additional updates within the next three months that will include 2013 wage data for the State and the University of California. The 2012 figures for all State employees, along with cities and counties, were added last year.

Those visiting publicpay.ca.gov can:

  • View compensation levels on map graphics, and search for compensation by region
  • Develop charts, trend-line and trend graphs
  • Quickly see lists of top earners at cities, counties, and other local governments
  • Generate side-by-side comparisons of local government payrolls
  • Create local agency summaries
  • Export custom reports or raw data from the site

See lists of delinquent local government compensation reports here.

A series of video tutorials also are available to guide users through the new site’s interface. The site currently includes annual compensation data for positions at cities, counties, higher education institutions, special districts and state departments.