LOS ANGELES CITY CONTROLLER'S BLOG
Friday, Aug 06, 2010
Bringing Transparency to City Hall
In an effort to make City government more transparent, today I unveiled an online searchable database of salaries for virtually every City employee in the City of Los Angeles. This makes our City the largest City in the nation to post such a comprehensive list. You can find the database here: http://controller.lacity.org/index.htm
The creation of the website was motivated in part by the recent controversy in the City of Bell, which I’m sure many of you have heard about by now. The City Manager, City staff and Councilmembers were paid exorbitant salaries with little to no public accountability. In the weeks following the scandal, there has been a heightened public interest in government employee salaries, and that is why I had this new database created.
My office created the database, which lists the salaries for all City of Los Angeles positions and are sorted by Department and salary. We will also work to update it in the near future to reflect salary reductions through furloughs and additional pay accrued through overtime. The only employees not listed are Department of Water and Power and Community Redevelopment Agency employees, as the City Controller’s office does not handle their payroll. I encourage both of those Departments to join the rest of the City in posting their salaries publicly.
As the City’s financial watchdog, my job is to ensure our finances and payroll are properly reported, but my job is not limited to that. I am responsible for making certain there is transparency and openness between the City and its citizens.
Though ensuring responsible use of tax dollars may fall under my duties as the City Controller, at the end of the day, we all work for the citizens of Los Angeles, and it is their right to know how their tax dollars are being spent. I believe this new database is the first step in the right direction.
Posted at 12:00 AM
