In the interest of government transparency, a conservative think tank recently released a report containing the salaries of most City and Borough of Juneau employees.

“Taxpayers employ government workers, and it’s important for them to know how much their employees are making,” said David Boyle, the director of the Alaska Policy Forum and the author of the report.

After examining the city’s general government payroll from fiscal year 2015, obtained via public records request, Boyle determined that the median cost of a CBJ employee — calculated by adding an employee’s gross annual pay plus all his or her benefits — is about $92,000. The cost of the highest-paid employee during that fiscal year, a distinction held by recently retired Juneau Police Department Sgt. David Wrightson, was nearly $210,000.

Boyle said his think tank has been releasing similar payroll reports for the past five years for several cities statewide, including Anchorage where he lives and the policy forum is based. The intention of the reports, which Boyle said “make no value judgments” regarding employee pay, was to “shed some light on things.”

The data that Boyle has furnished in these reports is interesting if a bit invasive, according to several Anchorage employees who have left “some very bad comments” on Boyle’s phone over the years. But data dumps like this — especially when their stated purpose is to show taxpayers how their money is being spent — needs to be read with caution. Data doesn’t lie, but it can easily be misleading.

Boyle made a point — both in his report and in a phone interview with the Empire — to explain that he didn’t alter the payroll data the city provided in any way. This may be true, but his report still needs some ‘splainin’, in the words of Ricky Ricardo, if it is to fulfill its goal.

The work behind the number (one)

Let’s take Sgt. Wrightson’s employee cost, for example. His gross pay of nearly $150,000 for fiscal year 2015 placed him ahead of the 1,000 or so city workers listed in Boyle’s payroll report. But what the data doesn’t explain is that Wrightson’s pay reflects the fact that he was pulling double duty.

Wrightson, who was already one of the more senior officers, was working a full 40-plus-hour patrol shift during the week and spending his days off in uniform acting as the Juneau Airport law officer, according to JPD spokesperson Erann Kalwara.

“He worked a tremendous amount of hours last year,” she said of Wrightson. “He worked a lot of overtime.”

In 2013, federal regulations changed requiring that sworn officers, not paid security guards, patrol airports. The Juneau Airport had to swap its Goldbelt Security force for JPD officers. The problem was that JPD already had nine vacancies at the time, and the airport required an additional five officers.

Wrightson stepped up to fill the void and was compensated with overtime pay as were other officers who volunteered to work at the airport on their days off.

Context is key

Both City Manager Rorie Watt and Deputy City Manager Mila Cosgrove weighed in on Boyle’s report, explaining that they, too, are in favor of transparency. Only about a month ago, Watt stressed the importance of open government in a speech to the Juneau Chamber of Commerce. Still, both city officials said that without proper context, reports like this — presented with the ambition of clearing things up — can inadvertently muddy the waters.

“I think people have a right to know the cost of government services,” Cosgrove said. “When it comes to wages and services, all of that is public information. What I don’t think is helpful is having information that is presented out of context.”

An important distinction that the Alaska Policy Forum fails to make in its report — which is all about how taxpayer money is being spent — is that several of the employees listed in its payroll aren’t in fact paid by city general tax fund dollars.

The Juneau Airport and the city’s Docks and Harbors and Water Utilities divisions are enterprise funds, meaning that their operations and employees are funded by user fees and other revenue streams, not city property or sales tax dollars. Though Eaglecrest Ski Area is not a true enterprise fund, user fees rather than taxes fund “a good chunk of its salaries,” according to Cosgrove.

Watt and Cosgrove also said that the report would be more helpful if it provided additional context to help people put the listed salaries into perspective.

In order to set wages, Cosgrove said the city looks closely at what the state government pays and tries to pay roughly the same. When the city is having a difficult time attracting or retaining employees, it compares its salaries against the private sector to make sure they, too, are roughly comparable.

Watt, who was the city engineering director until he was promoted in April, said he doesn’t think the city pays its engineers more than what they could make in the private sector. Such context, he said, would bolster the report.

“How should the city manager stack up with the president of the brewery or some large company in town? That’s what’s not being shown,” Watt said. “I look at my salary, and yeah it’s a lot of money, but every day when I show up to work I try to be worth it.”

Watt’s gross income of about $142,000 in FY 15 held the number three spot in the Alaska Policy Forum’s report. It went up to about $168,000 when he was promoted from engineering and public works director to city manager in April.

Missing Pieces

Context aside, the Alaska Policy Forum report is missing some important information entirely. The payroll data from the Juneau School District and Bartlett Regional Hospital, both city entities, are not included in the list.

This is because both the schools and the hospital abide by different personnel rules than the rest of city government. Each entity bargains differently with employees and labor unions, and each entity keeps its own payroll records, separate from the general government employee payroll Boyle got his hands on.

These payroll records, too, are open to the public. But to obtain them, Boyle would’ve had to ask each entity, which he didn’t (an oversight rather than an intentional omission).

In the nature of the report and in interest of transparency, it is also worth explaining what the Alaska Policy Forum is.

“We are a research-based think tank,” Boyle told the Empire. “We believe in free markets, limited government, and fiscal responsibility. We try to provide good information for the people from a libertarian or free market perspective.”

This much is provided on the think tank’s website. In a phone interview, Boyle also explained that the policy forum is “loosely connected” to the State Policy Network, an umbrella organization with conservative think tanks in every state in the nation.

The Alaska Policy Forum operates with a budget of about $50,000 per year, according to Boyle, who founded the think tank in 2009. That funding comes “mainly from Alaskans,” he said.

Also missing from the payroll report, Cosgrove said, is the human side of local government often overlooked and impossible to see in a data set.

“At the end of the day, people always criticize government for being people heavy, but that’s what we do,” Cosgrove said. “When people turn on the faucet to get water, they don’t think about the employee that made that happen. They don’t think about it until the water doesn’t come out.”

To view the report in full, including the list of city employee costs, click here.

• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or at sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.