Salaries and Watchdogs
By now, you have probably heard about the fiasco in Bell, Calif., where city officials were being paid outrageous salaries while cutting services and raising taxes.
When the manager of a city of 36,000 residents takes home almost $800,000 a year, that's going to raise some eyebrows. And how did he and other city executives get these salaries? The elected officials in Bell gave it to them, along with $100,000 annual salaries for themselves, for their part-time jobs.
This incident is causing people everywhere to question what their city employees make. For Carson City, you can check out those salaries and benefit amounts here.
A look at the list shows that Carson City doesn't compare to the outrage in Bell. The highest-paid person on the list make about a third of what the police chief in Bell was pulling down.
One of the big reasons for those outrageous salaries in Bell is the absence of a local news organization to play the role of watchdog.
Traditional local media outlets have been hurting for a while now, as news consumption habits change and advertising choices abound, pushing down prices. What outlets survive have sharply cut back on news reporting, meaning there are fewer journalists out there to watch out for what government does.
Local new media start-ups like Carson Now are stepping in to try and fill this role. While we have fewer resources than our old media competition, we try and use technology and a more open-source community approach to news gathering to fill in the holes.
We invite you to join the fun. If you have news, share it with us. If you have interesting insights to add, please do. Community news belongs to the community, and together we can help ensure that Carson City doesn't go down the path of Bell, Calif.
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