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Wage transparency at CATA March 14, 2019
In an effort to be open about wages, CATA (the Capital Area Transportation Authority) has provided on its website a downloadable list of employees who earned more than $100,000 in 2018. Here it is:
To provide a little more transparency, I obtained full payroll data from CATA for 2018 for all employees. I divided it by department and present it below as 3 separate lists:
Most of the information comes directly from an Excel file provided by CATA. I added two items. One is the annualized salary, which I calculated from the pay rate. Pay rates in the CATA file are either hourly or weekly. I multiplied the hourly rates by 2080 (40 x 52) and the weekly rates by 52. The other added item is "Difference" - the annualized amount subtracted from the gross pay for 2018. My hope was that amount would show pay received over and above regular salary, such as overtime.
On January 22, 2019, I sent a FOIA request to CATA asking for 2018 salary information. I requested the same information I asked for in 2017 for the 2016 year:
I asked for digital files.
Before I got a response - on February 4 - an opinion piece by CATA CEO Brad Funkhouser and a story by reporter Megan Banta appeared in the print edition of the Lansing State Journal.
A few days later, I got a thumb drive and a letter from the CATA FOIA coordinator in the mail. The letter said my request was denied. "Your request for records would require CATA to make a compilation or report of information and, thus, a new public record." They did provide free of charge a PDF file listing all CATA employees by group, and it included 2018 wages and pay rate. This file was completely worthless to me because I wanted the data in a form that would allow me to sort and do calculations. I emailed Brad Funkhouser and said I didn't understand why they couldn't give me what I asked for. Was this something their IT staff was incapable of providing? I said I wanted exactly what I asked for in my FOIA request, including a full breakdown of 2018 wages for each employee, and if they couldn't do that, he should let me know and I would appeal to the CATA board.
On February 14, I got an email from an attorney representing CATA. He wanted clarification of what I meant by "digital" files. After a few email exchanges, I agreed to pay $193.12 to get the files I wanted. I got the file by snail mail on March 9, on a thumb drive. Click here to download that Excel file.
The breakdown of wages I requested went way beyond what I had expected. For each employee, there are 143 possible types of payment, and the headings aren't very helpful. (At my request, CATA has provided this key to pay codes.) For any one employee, amounts are present for only a few pay types. For example, for Brian Gould, the mechanic in the maintenance department with the highest earnings for the year, regular earnings and overtime earnings are zero. But he does have amounts for these pay types:
For Scott Spicer, the operator (bus driver) with the highest earnings, regular earnings and overtime earnings are zero, just like with Gould. Here are pay types for which he has amounts:
Here is CEO Brad Funkhouser's breakdown:
And here is former CEO Sandra Dragoo's breakdown. Her termination date was 3/1/2018.
Send comments, questions, and tips to stevenrharry@gmail.com, or call or text me at 517-505-2696. If you'd like to be notified by email when I post a new story, let me know.
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