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CATA promptly provides 2020 salary info April 5, 2021
The Capital Area Transportation Authority has given me employee wage information for 2020. I present it here in three sections:
I wasn't able to present all the information provided by CATA. In addition to gross earnings, regular earnings and overtime for each employee, CATA has 134 other earnings types (see list here). The gross wage figure is not simply the total of regular and overtime earnings. It is the total of regular earnings, overtime and all 134 other earnings types. Any one employee does not have amounts for all 134 earnings types. The most one might have is about 30. For some earnings types, there are no amounts for any employee. It is very complicated. You can view the file exactly as I received it here.
I have calculated average gross wage amounts for three job groups that had multiple employees and compared them with 2018 amounts. I eliminated anyone who didn't work the full year - anyone who was hired or terminated in 2020 - and anyone whose gross wage amounts were unexpectedly low.
I also compared gross wage amounts for 2018 and 2020 for 3 top executives:
It appears that the regular earnings and overtime earnings fields are not used for hourly workers in Operations and Maintenance. To calculate overtime and double time earnings for them, I added up the amounts for the earnings types OT and DT. If I counted right, there are 24 OT and 14 DT earnings types. Here is what I found: According to this February 26 article in the Lansing City Pulse, CATA is in the midst of contentious negotiations with the Amalgamated Transit Union.
I have reported previously on CATA wages, for 2016 and 2018.
I emailed my FOIA request for 2020 wage information to CEO Brad Funkhouser on February 27 of this year. When I didn't get a response, I called on March 12 and talked to Executive Assistant Tina Orlando, who had me re-send the request. She emailed me on March 17 to report that she could not find my request and suggested that I send it as a reply to her email, which I did. But to be safe, I also printed it off and sent it by mail. On March 22, I sent another email to Tina asking if they'd received my email. No response. But I did get a call from Tina a few days later saying she'd received my letter and would have the file to me in a few days. I got it on March 31, well within the 5 business day deadline. And when I reported that hire date was missing, they fixed it and got it back to me the next day, April 1.
Last year, I had the same problem communicating by email with the Board of Water and Light, as I said in this story. I don't understand why.
Once CATA received my letter, the response was prompt and with no resistance, unlike the City of Lansing and the Board of Water and Light. Last month, Lansing denied outright my request for 2020 wage information "as no such records containing all that information were identified." (story here) They'd given me the information twice in the past - for 2010 and 2016, during the Bernero administration - but apparently the Schor administration is not capable, even though I gave them the 2010 and 2016 files as examples. And it was like pulling teeth to get the information from the BWL last year. When I finally did get it, some information was missing and some was unclear, and when I asked for clarification I was helpfully informed that "FOIA does not require a public body to answer questions."
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