San Franciscos London Breed is Americas highest paid mayor — being paid a $342,974 salary, plus $109,447 in perks, for a grand total of $452,421 — but her city set an all-time record last year with nearly 31,000 reports of human waste on the streets and sidewalks.
Breed is far from the exception among the City by the Bays workforce, as nearly 19,000 of her colleagues get total compensation of $150,000 or more annually, according to public records compiled by Open the Books.
Open the Books is a Burr Ridge, Illinois, non-profit government watchdog that has compiled and posted on the Internet compensation data for 64 million public employees in America.
San Francisco is home to Democratic Vice-Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. City voters have not elected a Republican mayor since the last one, George Christopher, left office in 1964.
Other notables among San Franciscos highly paid city workforce, according to Open the Books, include:
- Former city public works director Mohammed Nuru — the self-proclaimed “Mr. Clean” of city politics — received $380,000 annually before resigning in February following his arrest by the FBI on fraud charges linked to a porta-potty contract. His former department is responsible for removing human feces and used hypodermic needles from city streets and sidewalks.
- 31 members of Breeds mayoral staff receive at least $200,000 annually.
- Police Chief William Scott was paid $434,613, while four of his assistant chiefs received between $346,528 and $445,539 annually (one gets more than Scott due to greater seniority).
- San Francisco Sheriff Paul Miyamoto received $357,570. (San Francisco is both a city and a county and thus has police and sheriffs departments.)
- Homeless Services & Supportive Housing Director Jeff Kosinsky is paid $238,182 annually.
Those figures come at a time when San Franciscos city government has a $1.5 billion deficit. Even so, Open the Books President Adam Andrzejewski said Sept. 1 in announcing the data, that the deficit “isnt stopping 18,759 highly compensated employees from each bringing home pay packages worth $150,000 (or more) annually.
“We found truck drivers loaded up with $262,898 salaries; city painters making $270,190; firefighters earning $316,306; and plumbing supervisors cleaning up $348,291 every year. One deputy sheriff earned $574,595 last year–including $315,896 in overtime.
“On average, the citys 44,526 employees received pay and perks costing taxpayers $131,335 apiece. Four out of 10 — 18,749 city workers — received a compensation package exceeding $150,000 per year. The pay package includes retirement, health, overtime, pension, and other benefits on top of base salary.”
More than 39,000 of the citys workers are represented by municipal unions. The total value of compensation paid to union members exceeds $5 billion annually.
The largest of the unions is Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 1021, which represents more than 17,000 city workers, followed by the Professional and Technical Engineers Local 21 with more than 6,400.
San Francisco is not unique among Americas biggest cities in paying extremely lucrative pay packages to employees.
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