A Chicago Blog

3 Responses to “City Employee Salaries”

1. Eric
   June 10th, 2008 at 8:59 am

   

   I know, web-based databases drive me nuts when I’m trying to research something. I spent a lot of time just transcribing data from them when I was writing my thesis.

2. Dan Sprehe
   June 10th, 2008 at 1:16 pm

   

   Mike (and also Eric),

   First, I appreciate your posting the link on the blog (with credit also given to Rich at CapFax). We are actively working on making the data easier to navigate, as well as a good drill-down and advanced search function.

   To be honest, posting links to full files themselves is not something I care to do. I completely understand and appreciate every point that can be made to the contrary, but the fact is that this effort has taken an amount of work that can’t be described without using profanity I am the Chief Investigator - the only full-time investigator in the organization, which has three full-time employees, total. I spend more than half of my time working on our website, database, and IT issues. We’ve had to invest (literally) thousands of dollars to post what we have. The FOIA requests, in and of themselves, were difficult to have fulfilled and took months (and threats of lawsuits in some cases). Then, upon posting the City/County payrolls in October, the traffic was so overwhelming that our shared server crashed, making us lease a dedicated server. So we want to keep people coming to the website. We’re a public education organization, as a 501(c)3, and the database has (unintentionally, but to our delight) become a major part of what we do. We are adding more and more to it all the time.

   That said, depending on the circumstances, I will help and try to accommodate requests for batches of data, from time to time. Running the Investigative Program, we do not get paid by anyone for running stories (other than our salaries, thanks to our board of directors, generous members, and foundations). When we work jointly on a project with someone (a media outlet, for instance), we typically are credited for the work we provide. So in short: getting and posting all this stuff is a giant, expensive pain in the butt, and we don’t want people capitalizing off of our work without some acknowledgment.

   I can understand disagreements with that philosophy, honestly. But having put the hours I have into the work, we want the database to be a resource for everyone, including the BGA, as it’s a means to having more people learn about what we do (and maybe - just maybe- someday, we’ll be able to hire a fourth person
   Sincerely,

   Dan Sprehe, CFE
   BGA Chief Investigator

3. Mike
   June 10th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

   

   Dan, First, thanks so much for leaving a comment explaining why the raw data isn’t available. And more importantly THANK YOU for doing this very important work. The reality is that it would government pennies (marginally speaking) to post this information themselves and it’s a sad statement that they do not. Thank god for heroes like BGA.

   Let me also say that I COMPLETELY understand the rationale behind posting the data on your site and not making it widely available for downloading.

   That said I disagree somewhat and think making it available might actually lead to more publicity. For instance, I already have two particular charts I’d like to create from the data that I probably will never create if I have to hand copy it over to an excel file. By making it available you make sure citizen activists like me can analyzes it and publicize it. You do have to have a little faith that we will give you credit, and I understand that is a risk. But I think it is a risk worth taking.

   It’s the crazy thing about new marketing

   Thanks again.