So, I have no problem with the access,” he said. “The positions are supported by tax dollars. “When I worked at NMC (Northwestern Michigan College), Buckley and Charlevoix Schools, my salary was public. The new database is not considered a threat by county administrator Chet Janik, who served previously in education positions that would have put him on the list. The Leelanau Enterprise interviewed a county administrator who said he doesn’t mind efforts to publish such information. The Michigan Civil Service Commission posts them. It’s a throw-everything-at-the-wall argument. The database doesn’t offer any personal information beyond salary and position. Making employees names available puts them at risk.It’s not a transparent way to run government. Yes, you can use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the information if you know how. True, but public information doesn’t require a noble motivation to access it. It just gives the nosey parkers fodder.She listed some of the common arguments against a database and explained why, despite them, the salaries should remain public. Why? Because the employer of public workers is us, the citizens,” Putnam wrote. “The bottom line is that public salaries should be available in a transparent way. Lansing State Journal columnist Judy Putnam said publishing public employee salaries - something the LSJ once did - may upset some people, but transparency is justified. “This database can provide information on whether there are disparities based on gender, race, ethnicity, etc.,” Jane Briggs-Bunting, founding president of the Coalition for Open Government, was quoted in the Lansing State Journal as saying. While not the first online database of public employee salaries in Michigan, the new database is the most extensive one and makes it easy for people to access public records. We and our partners now offer this database as a service to taxpayers and other watchdogs.” “We use these public records to fact-check claims about salaries, verify data from other open records requests and hold governments accountable for their spending. “As part of our government transparency project, the Mackinac Center often obtains data on the compensation of government employees in Michigan,” Michael Reitz, Mackinac Center executive vice president, was quoted by My Bay City as saying. The new database - which is easily searchable and made available as a public service by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Michigan Coalition for Open Government and Michigan Press Association - contains salary information of nearly 300,000 public employees. The value of government transparency and the need for more of it has been on full display since the Mackinac Center and two other watchdog groups released the Michigan Government Salaries Database in late March.
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