Too much?

[demosincebirth]

By Thomas Peele and Daniel Willis
Contra Costa Times



A hospital administrator in Alameda County, a deputy police chief in San Francisco and a physician in Santa Clara County grossed more than $500,000 each in pay last year — the top three 2009 salaries in a database containing 200,000 public employees now available online.

Nancy Farber, chief administrator of Fremont's (population 200,000) Washington Hospital, earned $847,811.36; Charles J. Keohane, grossed $516,118.49, in his final year as a San Francisco deputy police chief, including $352,000 in cashed-in vacation and compensatory time; and Dr. Jana Dolnikova of Santa Clara County's Valley Medical Center, grossed $507,748.60

http://www.insidebayarea.com/data/ci_15153053

[DesertFlower]

1. i think a doctor who has years of school and training

should make a decent salary especially if they specialize. what i don't like they're not paying their fare share in taxes.

[Ruby the Liberal]

2. This is the message that needs to get out there

It isn't that people begrudge the rich of their earnings as much as we are furious at them (as a class) for fighting tooth and nail to avoid pitching in with the taxes.

[SheilaT]

3. Meanwhile, certified nurse assistants

and housekeepers and scores of other employees in hospitals make minimum wage and don't get very many raises.

I work for a hospital where the CEO got something like a 40 percent pay raise from 2008 to 2009 -- and for some reason his 2010 salary isn't yet published -- and none of the rest of us have gotten any raises since 2009.

[demosincebirth]

7. Sorry, but here in the BA, RN's easily make over 100K, thanks to good unions

[SheilaT]

9. I'm not talking about the BA RNs.

I'm talking about the lab people, the registration folks, the nurse's aides, those kinds of hospital workers.

[jwirr]

5. Yes, the issue is taxes not income.

[itsallhappening]

4. If they're gov't employees, then the answer is probably going to be "yes."

Taxpayers have a right to determine what gov't employees should be making.

If these were private jobs, I'd say nobody has a right to determine what they're making, other than the customers through their purchasing power.

[demosincebirth]

8. I agree, but it it's the only hospital in town and they're trying to

cut costs, don't you think they ought to start with the top administrator that makes $850000 a year. By the way, I think that salary for that job is ridiculous. Also, for police official making half a million a year. Not in this economy.

[obxhead]

6. It's not that anybody is making too much.

It's the extreme difference between the top and the bottom. Not only in salary, but benefits and job security as well. Tax rates for the 2 ends of the spectrum is also a huge problem.

It's not that any one person makes too much.