Shelby County job positions and salaries, 6663 of them at a cost of $275 million

With all the talk about tax increases from both the City and the County, I think that it is time to put the information before the public as to how much we are paying for City and County services and the information about base salaries and benefits. Through a series of open records requests, I have asked the City of Memphis, Shelby County, the Memphis City School System, the Shelby County School System and the MLGW for salary and benefit information.

As usual I have received good cooperation from the MLGW, (since Jerry Collins has taken over there is great openness at the MLGW), and Shelby County and the Shelby County School System. Also, as usual, getting information from the City of Memphis and the City of Memphis School System is like pulling teeth.

I have decided to publish the information that I have over the next few weeks so that the public can look at what their tax money is paying for and make up their own minds as to whether they are getting value for their tax dollars and if there are ways that the cost of government can be reduced. I have the names of the employees that are attached to these salaries but I decided, for now, to only publish the job titles and the yearly salaries. The yearly total is $275 million dollars.

Please be aware that there are substantial benefits attached to these figures that run up the additional cost to about 45% of the base salaries. Those employees with longer years of service can get up to 13 weeks per year of time off due to vacations, sick days, personnel days, holidays and bonus days that means that they can be off work 25% of the year. Obviously this means that more people must be employed to get the work done. Very few in the private sector have such benefits. We need to take a hard look at our government and see if we can tighten belts beyond what politicians say is possible.

Click here to see what your public servants are earning and what their job titles are