Houston Chronicle Posts Payroll Database of Government Employees--Search by Employee Name to Find Their Pay
Posted: Wednesday, July 09, 2008
by Alf Gordon
Our local newspaper, the Houston Comic Book...oh, I'm sorry, that's the Houston Chronicle...has decided that taxpayers in Harris County need to know exactly where their dollars are going. To that effect, they have released a story today by reporter Matt Stiles, identifying a database on their Web site that allows the user to enter a government employee's name and get back a display showing the person's base salary, overtime, bonuses, and car allowances for 2007. The data comes from detailed electronic payroll data on 81,000 employees at the Metropolitan Transit Authority, city of Houston, Harris County, Port of Houston Authority, Harris County Department of Education, Houston Community College and Houston Independent School District. All the information was obtained through the Texas Public Information Act and compiled by Houston Chronicle staff.
While the obtaining of the information was free, the results of its posting were not. The article can still be viewed online, but as of this writing, the database itself is not accessible on the newspaper's Web site, although the Chronicle hasn't bothered to change its "promo" on the front page (in over an hour of trying to access the database I was able to get in once). The rest of the time the links go to a section where readers can comment on various articles. Amazingly, it's one of the most-commented-on articles for the day. And the comments run the gamut. Some feel that the public dissemination of this information is long overdue and shows the waste of taxpayers' money. Others feel that the privacy of individuals has been violated, and that this will lead to additional opportunities for identity theft, legal action on the part of spouses and ex-spouses, and increased taxes to make up the disparity in pay that many low-level employees will now be able to claim by viewing their colleagues' pay information online.
I can understand the Chronicle's noble desire to show readers where their tax money is going. Waste in any form should be identified and eliminated, and I have no desire to defend any person who uses his or her position in goverment to promote himself or herself, and fatten a personal bank account in the process. However, the focus of this article and its accompanying database was payroll only. What about those infamous $600 screwdriver and $2500 toilet purchases we've all heard about? Did the Chronicle collect data concerning other areas where taxpayers' money was being misspent?
The article also encourages the reader to draw the conclusion that an employee receiving high amounts of money for overtime is wrong. It does not bother to report why the overtime was paid. For years the city of Houston has complained that it is trying to deal with a shortage of police in a city that's growing every year. Fewer police to handle more problems means that inevitably there will be some overtime required to get all that work done. I know several individuals who work in the Houston Police Department and have heard their stories about the hours they are required to work and spend away from their families. And this is not time spent at a desk, either. They're out in the field, working the streets, and risking their lives to protect and defend the citizens of Houston. These facts are not brought out in the article, leaving readers to draw incorrect conclusions based on partial data.
Finally, what additional benefit does the average Chronicle reader gain by being able to search for an individual's name and payroll information? None. The only advantage I've seen is that several city employees have been mentioned by name in the ongoing reader commentary, their personal lives being plastered on the Internet for everyone to see...and these people haven't done anything wrong. The information that was gathered by the Houston Chronicle could have been used to generate reports of a general nature showing how much overtime was paid to city employees as a whole. If certain individuals had high amounts of overtime pay, they could have been contacted individually and asked about the overtime. However, that would have required some detective work on the part of the journalist, something that evidently somebody felt was too much effort to endure. It's so much easier to publish the raw data and not have to find out why it's there. And if a few people get hurt in the process, hey, it's not the fault of the Chronicle. They presented "the facts."
Did the Houston Chronicle do the right thing by making this information public to the general public? Or did they just want to generate buzz on a controversial topic and sell a few more papers regardless of who got hurt? I'm of the opinion that their common sense was overridden by the desire to gain additional traffic on their Web site in pursuit of the almighty dollar. I am anxious to follow this story in the days ahead to see just what kind of backlash they have to endure.
ADDENDUM 7/20/08: The database is accessible today.
I can understand the Chronicle's noble desire to show readers where their tax money is going. Waste in any form should be identified and eliminated, and I have no desire to defend any person who uses his or her position in goverment to promote himself or herself, and fatten a personal bank account in the process. However, the focus of this article and its accompanying database was payroll only. What about those infamous $600 screwdriver and $2500 toilet purchases we've all heard about? Did the Chronicle collect data concerning other areas where taxpayers' money was being misspent?
The article also encourages the reader to draw the conclusion that an employee receiving high amounts of money for overtime is wrong. It does not bother to report why the overtime was paid. For years the city of Houston has complained that it is trying to deal with a shortage of police in a city that's growing every year. Fewer police to handle more problems means that inevitably there will be some overtime required to get all that work done. I know several individuals who work in the Houston Police Department and have heard their stories about the hours they are required to work and spend away from their families. And this is not time spent at a desk, either. They're out in the field, working the streets, and risking their lives to protect and defend the citizens of Houston. These facts are not brought out in the article, leaving readers to draw incorrect conclusions based on partial data.
Finally, what additional benefit does the average Chronicle reader gain by being able to search for an individual's name and payroll information? None. The only advantage I've seen is that several city employees have been mentioned by name in the ongoing reader commentary, their personal lives being plastered on the Internet for everyone to see...and these people haven't done anything wrong. The information that was gathered by the Houston Chronicle could have been used to generate reports of a general nature showing how much overtime was paid to city employees as a whole. If certain individuals had high amounts of overtime pay, they could have been contacted individually and asked about the overtime. However, that would have required some detective work on the part of the journalist, something that evidently somebody felt was too much effort to endure. It's so much easier to publish the raw data and not have to find out why it's there. And if a few people get hurt in the process, hey, it's not the fault of the Chronicle. They presented "the facts."
Did the Houston Chronicle do the right thing by making this information public to the general public? Or did they just want to generate buzz on a controversial topic and sell a few more papers regardless of who got hurt? I'm of the opinion that their common sense was overridden by the desire to gain additional traffic on their Web site in pursuit of the almighty dollar. I am anxious to follow this story in the days ahead to see just what kind of backlash they have to endure.
ADDENDUM 7/20/08: The database is accessible today.
This Article has been viewed 2,850 times. (Not updated in real-time.)
Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Hmmmm, I was just able to access the search function. Very interesting indeed.
Now what would happen if all government expenditures were required to have a tax payer ID associated with it? (Even corporations have a tax payer ID number.) If this information was made public it would certainly save the taxpayers in this country billions of dollars because of the added accountability.
Salary for government employees is a different issue of course, and I would hate to have my salary plastered all over the Internet, but it does make you think about how the technological advances of today could help solve some age-old problems with government accountability.And this is a perfect example of how the technological and legal advances of today can create even more problems than they solve.
very bad
We want your comments! If you can read this, you don't have javascript enabled, so you can't use this comment system. Please enable javascript.