State government salary project



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State Government Salary Project Goal: 1) To develop each state's Government benefits "state government salary" page into a "one-stop shop" for learning about state government employees' compensation.

1 Creating sections
2 Other sections
3 Tips
4 State Chart
- 4.1 Articles
- 4.2 Teacher salaries

[edit] Creating sections

Estimated time to complete: 45 min - 1 hour

[edit] Basic numbers

Every article should include this basic information:

How much money goes to salaries each year?
Where do the funds come from
Is there different system of pay? Merit? Or is all on a scale?
How many public employees are there in the state? How does it break down?

Teachers

Discuss how the salaries are negotiated, how often, and who they are negotiated by.
Salary scales, qualifications, schedules.
Avg pay
How many teachers are employed in the state?

[edit] Keep it current

What is the state of employee salaries this year? Are they up or down? Compare previous years to current information.
Had leadership received significant increases? Or just one sector (ex. teachers or elected officials)?
Has there been any corruption charges or other scandals concerning salaries? Make sure to include it.
Are there any changes happening to the states payroll?

[edit] Reform

What transparency efforts has the state engaged in for public employee's payroll? Discuss both proposed, failed, and legislation that is being introduced as well as existing websites.

If the government hasn't done anything, has a non-profit or activist taken it upon themselves?

After writing up on this information, find what databases are accessible and post them in a chart.

For example:

Resource	Includes	URL
OpenGov.com	Teachers pay scales	www.opengov.com
Open2Gov.com	Teacher's individual salary and benefits up to 2007	www.open2gov.com

Some resources:

[edit] Other sections

Make sure all the information below is cited in the article and is using up to date information. Most of the salary articles should already include this info, but if they do not add the updated information and compare it against the previous years.

[edit] Salaries

When writing about salaries please try to break it down by the level. For example: the legislature, executive (governor), local, and emergency services.

Are there pay scales?

How does one reach a high scale?
Is there a break down of how many employees are in each level?
Has there been a movement for merit pay?

Who are the 10 highest paid? Make a chart if available.

{|class="wikitable sortable"
! Name
! Position
! Salary
|-
| NAME || POSITION || SALARY
|}

What is the median salary?
What percentage of the budget is labor and salary?
How many days a year do they work? Does it match their actual attendance?
How many vacation days?
How often are contracts negotiated?

[edit] Bonuses

Are bonuses available for this position?
Who approves them?
What is the track record, average amount?

[edit] Benefits

What type of health care plan do they receive?
What kind of sick leave can be expected?
Are both men and women qualified for maternity leave?

[edit] Retirement

What type of pension or 401k do they get?

[edit] Double dipping

Sometimes positions get extra pay from the same system for sitting on a committee. Is that happening?

[edit] Tips

Break it down. If you are covering bonuses then create a subsection. The most important thing is that it is easy for other users to read it.
Use charts. If you have a lot of data on hand it may be easier to break it into a chart like so:

{|class="wikitable"
! Header one
! Header two
! Header three
|-valign="top"
| cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3
|-valign="top"
| cell 1 || cell 2 || cell 3
|}

Remember to reference your sources. More often than not you'll have to reference a source twice. Below is an example on how to do that. Remember that "Abbreviation" can be replaced with any type of shortcut you'd like. Commonly people used the initials for the newspaper they're sourcing from, so Chicago Tribune would be "CT".

This is a sample fact.<ref name="Abbreviation">[http://www.url.com ''Source'', Title, Date]</ref>

This is the second time I'm going to use the same source.<ref name="Abbreviation" />

Also make sure to add the {{salaries}} template to all the articles.

[edit] State Chart

While creating the state pages we'll want to create a chart of all the salary databases that are available to citizens. To do this, please add your chart (from under the reform section) to this national chart: Public employee salary resources. Remember you'll need to add a column identifying your state for each entry.