Fayette.Talk

By bubba

September 12, 2007 9:52 AM | Link to this

This State of Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts link provides public record salary information for every state and county employee.

https://www.audits.state.ga.us/esa/index.html

By posterchild

September 12, 2007 3:49 PM | Link to this

I don’t understand the money taboo we have as a society. People seem to feel more comfortable anymore talking openly about personal issues such as sex, health… maybe if people talked about money more, we wouldn’t have so many problems with it. How many people divorce over financial situations? How many people declare bankruptcy because they get into bad habits and are afraid to speak up about it?

I don’t really care if people know what I make (I’m a teacher, so they can easily find it out). As long as I’m living within my means and taking care of any debt I might have, it shouldn’t be a problem.

By Stan

September 12, 2007 4:36 PM | Link to this

I don’t see the big problem with knowing what someone else makes, nor do I have a problem with anyone knowing what I make. I still get to spend/save it as I see fit.

By Fear-n-Loathing

September 12, 2007 5:10 PM | Link to this

I work for the fed. govt. and I’m glad to know that everyones paycheck is out there. I know how much my boss makes, and I ask myself, why on Earth does my boss make this much? Why on Earth do we, civil servants, make this much money? Seriously tho, to me, 180k is a lot of money for a superintendent. Especially for a guy who has seen SAT scores drop over the last coupla years. Now, the 3% pay raise teachers got….thats a different ugly story entirely.

By catlady

September 12, 2007 5:47 PM | Link to this

Apparently, however, the above link only lists salary,not total compensation, which may be tens of thousands of dollars more.

By h ryder

September 12, 2007 6:00 PM | Link to this

I really did not care if people were aware of my tax payer paid salary prior to my retirement. However, with the exception of retirement funds received monthly from the Texas State Teachers Retirement System, the only person(s) who should know my total income and or financial status are my wife and the IRS.

By zschroeder

September 13, 2007 7:30 AM | Link to this

Does anyone knows the websites or method to access federal employees and MARTA employees? If so, please post.

By Terry

September 13, 2007 8:02 AM | Link to this

Go to “thejobsite.org” and view job listings in state govt. Notice the requirements and look at the pay. How do we expect our state to recruit and retain talented people with those awfully low salaries. I’ve worked in state government, and the agency that I worked for was a revolving door. There were always a page of vacancies listed on it’s website. Compare Georgia’s state pay to NC’s; NC is higher. Georgia ranks with Alabama and Mississippi, honestly. Keep in mind that most state employees have to work with the general public. That says a lot in and of itself. The high turnover rate in state govt. jobs means that people don’t stay long enough to become competent in what they do. The ones that do stay burn out quickly and wait for retirement.

By dobearsbare

September 13, 2007 4:05 PM | Link to this

Abby: Why does this make you squirm? As a purported member of the fourth estate, you should squirm if that information wasn’t made public. As for DeCotis, he’s basically the CEO of a multi-million dollar corporation. You put him at the top of any company with as many employees as the Fayette County school system has, and he’d probably be making much more than $180,000.

By Theft Victim

September 18, 2007 12:12 PM | Link to this

Let’s clarify a point that most folks are too uncomfortable to deal with. Taxes are theft. They are monies that are seized by the government and the victim has no recourse. There is no direct exchange of services for these taxes. That would be a user fee, like at a campground. Those are optional. You don’t need to take the service. Taxes are not optional. If you don’t pay they come with the guns (or the laws, the leins, or the jails). Government’s only source of income is this theft through the mechanism of taxation.

Private businesses are different. For those that do not receive any of their money directly from the govenrment (yes, almost every business ends up with money from some govenrment employee’s paycheck, but for the sake of discussion…) they must earn what they get by providing a product or service that someone wants in the free market more than that offered by another company. If you choose, you can go to a different company, make the product yourself, do without, whatever. In this relationship you are free. In the relationship with government you are not. The bigger the government and the more it steals from you the less free you are.

If you are a govenment employee, or are a company that receives money from the government for services, products, etc. then you are the recipient of stolen goods. Yes, you will say, but government has passed laws that make this legal. The moral character of the relationship has not changed simply because Ceasar has deemed it acceptable. The commandment does not read “thou shalt not steal…unless the government says its ok.” So as a teacher or other government employee you cannot come to my house with a gun and demand a portion of your paycheck, but you can go to work and have one of your fellow employees do it for you. And apparently the fact that we can participate in the farce that is the election process is supposed to make that theft ok. Well it doesn’t.

So long as this is the realtionship between the victim and the victimizer, then the amount of money you are stealing from the rest of us will be made public. We have at the minimum a right to know these things. There is of course no accountability for most employees in government. They are not elected, they practically cannot be fired, but they are able to exert enormous control over the lives of everyone else, beginning with the theft of their salary. So for that you must give up a little privacy.

Some CEO may make 500 times what a teacher makes and may do it all while selling alcohol and tobacco products, but at least at the end of the day he earned his salary and the marketplace has an opportunity with every sale to send a message of approval or disapproval to him. After 20 years or less the government employee gets to retire on a government pension and gets to continue their theft until death. The rest of society must work well into their 60’s and then some to keep paying for the government waste. And some people complain about the free market.