26 Grand Rapids City Employees Received $20k-Plus in Overtime
There were city 378 city workers getting $80,000 or more in 2017
Just two Grand Rapids police officers, Joseph Garrett and Brad Bush, collected a combined $97,685 in overtime pay in 2017, making them among the highest-paid city employees.
Bush received $48,420 in overtime payments, which pushed his gross salary to $132,994. Garrett received $49,265 in overtime, contributing to a gross salary of $124,775.
A Grand Rapids police officer’s top regular pay rate is $35.71 an hour, or $74,296 a year, according to the union contract. At that pay rate, Bush would have had to work 904 hours of overtime — or 17.38 hours a week — to accumulate $48,420 in overtime. For his part, Garrett would have had to work 919 hours of overtime – or 17.68 hours a week – to make $49,265 in overtime.
There were 26 Grand Rapids city employees who collected more than $20,000 in overtime in 2017. A police dispatcher received overtime payments of $26,397, which accounted for 34 percent of her $77,323 gross salary.
A total of 378 Grand Rapids employees received salary and overtime pay of $80,000 or more in 2017; 83 of these received $100,000 or more. The city of Grand Rapids listed 1,654 jobs (on a full-time equivalency basis) in 2017. Median household income in the city in 2016 was $42,019.
In 2015, the Grand Rapids Press published an article titled, “With salary study in works, here’s what Grand Rapids city workers earn.”
The salary range listed for a Grand Rapids police officer was $43,523-$67,156. However, the union contract has the top of scale salary at $74,296.
That Grand Rapids Press story stated the salary range for the city manager was between $139,957-$178,624. The highest-paid employee in 2017 was now-retired city manager Gregory Sundstrom, who had a $213,155 salary in 2017.
That 2015 story said the pay range for the city clerk was between $93,331-$118,178. City Clerk Darlene O’Neal had a 2017 salary of $140,732.
Interim City Manager Eric Delong didn’t return an email seeking comment.
In April, The New York Times published a story titled: “Public-sector employees are losing their foothold in the middle class.” It alleged that public sector employees have found themselves “financially downgraded.”
Michigan Capitol Confidential is periodically examining municipal employee pay levels in the state of Michigan. The Grand Rapids salary and overtime figures in this story came from a Freedom of Information Act request.
But many public sector salaries in Michigan are available online. OpenTheBooks.com is a nonprofit that has posted several years’ worth of salary data for nearly every government worker in Michigan and other states. OpenTheBooks puts in FOIA requests to municipalities all across the country and posts the data online.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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Legislature Approves New Business Subsidies
Big budget bill makes it more difficult to hold lawmakers accountable for spending
Lawmakers approved a new budget containing $162 million in new business subsidies. Unfortunately, holding lawmakers accountable for these votes is difficult and they will not factor into our legislative scorecard on business subsidies.
That is because the votes are in a budget bill that includes the rest of state government spending, aside from funding for public schools, community colleges and higher education. The bill authorizes $39.9 billion in total spending, $20.8 billion of which comes from the federal government (which state residents contribute to in part, obviously). Thus, the $162 million is just a small part of a $39.9 billion budget bill and makes for a pretty lousy test of an individual lawmaker’s support for new business subsidies. This is why we excluded these types of votes from our business subsidy scorecard.
It didn’t use to be this way. Lawmakers used to vote for separate bills for each department. That meant that legislators faced more direct accountability concerning their stance on business subsidies or other issues. They could vote yes for some budget bills and no on others.
It is unclear whether splitting budget bills up or voting on one big omnibus bill makes a difference on how much and what type of spending lawmakers approve, however. The latest budget contained a small reductions in spending on business subsidies, for instance.
A portion of the new subsidies are included in our scorecard, however, because the funding was approved in a separate bill passed by legislators back in 2013. The budget authorizes $75 million from the 21st Century Jobs Fund to be spent on subsidy programs. This money was set to expire in 2016, but lawmakers voted in 2013 to extend the program through 2019. Lawmakers wouldn’t have the money to spend in this year’s budget had it not been authorized in 2013.
The money from this comes from the state’s settlement with tobacco companies years ago, and this could be spent elsewhere or returned to taxpayers if it wasn’t spent on business subsidies. The vote to extend this arrangement had seven dissenters in the Senate — all Republicans — and 26 dissenters in the House, 23 Republicans and three Democrats.
All told, $16.1 billion in business subsidies have been authorized since 2001, $6 billion of which we include in our legislative scorecard on business subsidies.
Michigan Capitol Confidential is the news source produced by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy. Michigan Capitol Confidential reports with a free-market news perspective.
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