State plays salary hide-and-seek

Here’s what we can tell you: From 2008 to 2009 – the heart of the Great Recession – average annual salaries for private sector employees in Pierce County grew by 0.7 percent. That’s not surprising, given that the county’s consumer price index grew by only 0.6 percent during that same period.

Here’s what else we can tell you: From 2008 to 2009, average annual salaries for employees of local government agencies in Pierce County grew by 4.8 percent. On average, each local government employee took home $2,290 more in 2009 than in 2008. On average, each private-sector employee took home $277 more.

Here’s what we can’t tell you – at least not yet: Which of Pierce County’s 81 local government agencies have held salaries close to the local rate of inflation and which have not.

We can’t tell you because the state won’t tell us.

This information is critical in the coming weeks as local government agencies build their 2011 budgets in the face of declining tax revenues. One way is to raise taxes. Another way is to lay off employees and cut government services. Another way could be to keep a lid on salaries, saving both jobs and services.

We have been looking for a comprehensive and consistent way to compare the growth in private salaries with the growth in government salaries. We found it in a quarterly wage report by the state Employment Security Department. It is current through the end of 2009 and provides a breakdown for Pierce County.

The report lists average salaries for 18 “industries” including government, which is further broken down into federal, state and local levels. These category averages allowed us to calculate the percentages above.

Next, we requested a breakdown of average wage data for each of Pierce County’s 81 local government “reporting units,” even offering to pay for the data retrieval. That’s when we ran into trouble.

Individual employer salary data is proprietary and therefore private, Employment Security said, even for public agencies. The department cited federal guidelines and a state law prohibiting the release of those records.

Go ask each of the 81 agencies directly for the information, they suggested. The only problem was, they wouldn’t give us a list of the agencies. That was private, too, they said.

Yet further down in the state law is a clause that says the department can release wage information with the employers’ consent. Employment Security didn’t tell us that, but the state public records ombudsman did.

Because Employment Security knows who those employing units are – and we don’t – we asked the department to seek that consent.

The communications director assured us: “the Public Records Office will manage the waiver requests and communicate with the Unemployment Insurance staff to arrange for the data queries.”

“In many cases, they’ll probably have to figure out who has the authority to sign such a waiver,” she wrote. “I expect that phase alone could take weeks.” And further: “The employers are not obligated to respond to our waiver request – assuming they know whom in their organization has authority to sign a waiver.”

We asked: “From whom in a given organization will your agency accept a waiver? Couldn’t you share that with the reporting agency?” No one responded.

At the department’s suggestion, we sent a list of agencies we were most interested in – the nine largest government employers – presuming they were on the secret list. That was Wednesday. We asked the agency to tell us by Sept. 22 what records it had received permission to release. We also asked for a log of the department’s communications with local government agencies. We wanted to know whether and how each responded.

On Friday, Employment Security declared an apparent change of heart.

State law “does not obligate the department to obtain waivers from individuals and employing units on behalf of third party requestors,” their e-mail said. “In our view, for the department to go beyond this interpretation by trying to obtain waivers would not be appropriate. Individuals and employing units could very well construe that our agency is pressuring them to release the information or that our department endorses the third party requestor obtaining the requested information.” The department “will not be seeking waivers from the identified agencies or any other Pierce County government agencies in response to your public records request.”

We aren’t stopping there. We’ll try to figure out who’s on the secret list of 81 and whom in each agency to ask for the wage data. If any of you are reading this and wish to volunteer your data, please send it to my e-mail below.

We’re also asking agencies about employee benefit costs and planned service cuts and other budgetary information you have a right to know. And we plan to ask the state Sunshine Committee and others to reconsider a provision of state law that apparently prevents members of the public from getting information about the salaries they are paying.

Karen Peterson: 253-597-8434
karen.peterson@thenewstribune.com