Transparent California Completes 2024 Compensation State Data Collection!

Transparent California, the state’s largest database of public pay and pension data, has now obtained 2024 data covering over 93% of employee compensation and pension payments in our state.  This includes state, county, city, school district, and special records.

Our team has collected almost 3 million compensation records documenting $278 billion in total pay and benefits, and 1.5 million pension records with $64 billion in payments.  Since launching over a decade ago Transparent California has now collected and posted over 50 million compensation and pension records. All available free at http://transparentcalifornia.com.

This year we’ve made that site easier to use.  Users report they love our site changes and web traffic has seen a tremendous increase, to over 2 million page views a month.

Did you know in 2024 149,065 public employees made total compensation exceeding a quarter-million dollars a year?  For more detail on what we’ve found in this data, go to our website and click on News and Updates for a summary.

And if you have a specific interest in an agency of our government, click “Get notified” on that agency’s page and you’ll get a notice when new data is posted.

Transparent California’s data collection schedule is determined by the State Controller’s Office reporting requirements. The inordinate delays allowed by the state, as well as significant resistance from some of the agencies involved, is why we’re just now wrapping up 2024.

Assembly Bill AB1821, if passed, would extend the time for a response from 14 calendar days to 14 “business days”, effectively be three weeks.  This may sound small, but that deadline only applies to a “response”, not to provision of the actual records requested.  Our legislature continues to ignore the current legislation has no defined deadline for production of the actual records, nor does it impose any penalty on agencies for delaying the process (or declining to respond altogether) even if the requester files a lawsuit and wins.

Transparent California’s Director of Research, Todd Maddison, notes “As we see more tax increase proposals appearing, we’re focused on giving the People the data they deserve to see how their existing tax dollars are being spent, so they can make informed decisions at the ballot box.”

Transparent California depends on the generosity of individual donors to enable this collection. Anyone with a specific interest in a particular agency can sponsor collection of their data and support the effort to provide the public with this service.