Emanuel Puts Salaries of City Employees Online

Public employees should have a right to privacy like anyone else...Their
salaries can be publish along with positions and departments but their
names?? In majority of civilized countries people still have a right to
keep their names private. Oh well...next step... home visits?, you got
the names pick one you like?...

That is crazy. I feel dirty for looking up my friends' salaries already.

Side-note: Check out the photographer's Fuji X100 in the right corner. Sweet!

DOesnt this violate the privacy of the employees? This is not a good idea.

Agreed. I don't like the idea that you should be expected to give up a huge level of personal privacy just because of who your employer happens to be.

Yeah. Well. Public universities have these deals as well. There is a balance of personal privacy versus people having a right to know where public funds are going. I could see creating a threshold. Maybe, all salaries above $100,000 or $75,000 are public, but people do have a right to know that salaries are consistent and reasonable.

Public employees should have a right to privacy like anyone else...Their salaries can be publish along with positions and departments but their names?? In majority of civilized countries people still have a right to keep their names private. Oh well...next step... home visits?, you got the names pick one you like?...

Where in the city do you work? Public employees have no right to privacy when it comes to their taxpayer-funded salaries. I can see this causing some tensions in the workplace when diligent Municipal Employee #1 finds out that lazy Municipal Employee #2 makes 30% more ... but this transparency in the end is good for everyone. And like I said above, this info (and state and county employee info) has been available on the BGA web site for years. They also have IN, MO and WI.

http://www.bettergov.org/watch...

I worked for a public university (not in Illinois) where everyone's salary, from the student worker to the university president was public information.  It was placed on the school's website, searchable by position or employee name, and updated once a year.

I was there for 3 years and in that time it never caused a problem amongst the employees.  I think that most people in most offices know roughly what their co-workers make -- maybe not to the penny, but a ballpark figure.

Also, for a lot of these spots the positions are unionized, so the people living under that contract know who gets what. Only the supervisory positions are (usually) not covered.

Plus, if Rahm's brother has a job and is making $600,000 while nobody else is making more than $175,000 wouldn't you want to know that?

I wonder what the update frequency will be on this data. I can't seem to locate any indication as to the age of the current data set or the plan for updates.

Touche. It is a symbolic move by Emanuel.

Edit: comment intended as a reply to ChicagoD

The BGA did this years ago.

Yes. You really don't see a difference in the city doing this and the city forcing others to FOIA the info and publish it? Because I do. Even if it was always technically "public" being published by the city means that instead of grudgingly admitting it's public, the city actually is embracing it.

That's nice.  I wonder if he'll include all his appointees too?  I'm curious what billionaire and subprime queen Penny Pritzker will be getting paid to be on the school board.....