Constitutional Law

Is posting public employee salaries online a good thing?

By Steven Clift

Government Technology reported on public employee protests to seeing their names and salaries online via a database on the Sacramento Bee.

What about public employee salaries - should all be publicly posted online? Should only management level and above be listed specifically with others displaying the salary range per pay scales for various classifications?

I have a hard time imagining a democracy where any and all legally public government information is not on the Internet for all to see in a decade or so. This means the ethics filings of public officials will be liberated from the dusty paper files in the deep dark almost hidden office which holds such information for "accountability."

In the meantime, should newspaper slap this stuff online while open government gets its act together? Here is some of the reaction on the Bee.

Steven Clift
E-Democracy.Org

Full post as published by MediaShift Idea Lab on March 18, 2008 (boomark / email).