Wonder what your colleagues, administrators make? It’s different than you think

If you’ve ever wondered how your pay compares with your colleagues, you can find that out– if they are a state employee and if you know where to look.

Individuals who work for any state agency have their annual salaries and pay listed in several places, and it’s open to the public to inspect. Salaries and pay are public record,

But why should that information be public?  That’s because unlike many employers, the state of Oklahoma pays its employees with money from tax dollars, which is taken from every tax-paying citizen.

People should be able to know if the money they’ve paid the government to distribute is being doled fairly and wisely.

They’d want to know if the governor’s wife was being paid $200,000 for stapling papers, while the staff assistant for the Department of Education who works 80 hours a week was being paid $19,000. And, they can look that up.

So if you are looking for salary information on OCCC campus, go to the circulation desk at the Keith Leftwich Memorial Library and ask for the Staffing Plan. The relatively thick paper-back book shows salary figures for all staff, faculty and administrators at OCCC.

But, it doesn’t show the true amount that’s paid to an employee, such as to a faculty member.

For example, a faculty member can have her salary listed in the Staffing Plan as $52,492. But, because she may teach extra classes or hold several paid positions on campus, her total pay for the year may be much higher.

She could end up making $75,866 (which is almost twice the amount of some faculty). But the staffing plan wouldn’t show that she was being paid so much more than what’s listed on the salary page.

So to get a better idea of how many tax dollars are going to a specific state employee, people can visit these sites:

https://oklahomawatchdata.org/university-salaries    This site, which generates information at the end of the year, gives a more complete picture of how much people are paid with your tax dollars.

For example, it shows that in 2019,

Jerry L StewardPresident$249,137
Marlene T LandiniExecutive Vice President$126,540
Gregory L GardnerVice Pres for Acad Affairs$114,566
Donald R HacklerChief of Staff$112,576
Keith L SteincampChief Financial Officer$104,596
Daniel C PiazzaChief of Police$103,489

https://tulsaworld.com/news/specialreports-databases/oklahoma-state-employee-payroll-for-2019/html_4ee56804-17a2-11e5-a811-b37e96e081ac.html  This site is a bit more cumbersome, but it’s easy to use.  One can search by state agency or by school and scroll down to see an employee.

For example, it will show that Professor of Mass Media Communications Markus Zindelo’s salary (who serves a a full time faculty member –teaching 7 classes each semester and four in the summer– department chair and Pioneer Newspaper Adviser) makes much more than what’s listed in the Staffing Plan—$47.623. But he did a lot of extra work and made much more:

And, if you want to get the latest monthly payroll data released by the state (which is March 2020) you can get it here: https://data.ok.gov/dataset/state-of-oklahoma-payroll-2020

To use it, click the Black “Explore” button next to the data set labeled “https://data.ok.gov/dataset/state-of-oklahoma-payroll-2020” , then click preview. Next, type in the last name of the employee you are wanting to research, and scroll down until you see the pay.

This site will show how much an employee’s paycheck was.

For example, it would show that an OCCC faculty member, who is paid every other week, was paid: $1,338.49, $489.83 (for 7 hours of work), and $1,338.49 for the first pay date of the month.

It would also show that this same employee was paid the same amount at the middle of the month, coming out to be about $6,333 a month.

But why does the Staffing Plan in the OCCC library lists figures for 2021?

The Staffing Plan in the library is for the current fiscal year not the actual calendar year.  June 2020 is when the fiscal year 2020 ended, and July 2020 is when the 2021 fiscal year started.

Confusing?  Think about if the new year, instead of starting Jan. 1, started July 1.

Of course some would rather “sensitive information” such as salaries not be made public altogether.

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