The Public Editor: Accountable to the public for whom they work

The Bee's posting last week of an online database making it easy to look up the salaries of state workers by name has made two things clear:

First, many state workers are irate, complaining it is an invasion of their privacy. Second, the database is wildly popular, with more than 2 million page views in just the first three days, setting a sacbee.com record by a quantum leap that's growing each day.

Beyond those two facts, though, there's little agreement.

Certainly for hundreds of state workers who called or e-mailed my office, nothing will suffice except the database's removal. Many workers were urged on by their unions.

The volume of e-mails was so heavy, it's a wonder the state's computer system didn't crash, since most came from state computers.

This is, after all, a company town, and that company is government, with 16 percent of the city's work force being state employees. They make up about 12 percent of all workers in our four-county region.

The reality is that the likelihood of The Bee taking down the database is nil.

Nor should it come down, in my opinion.

More broadly, given the paper's legal right to publish public records and the courts coming down on the side of transparency, the question posed by some state workers is whether The Bee should have published the database.

I think the answer is yes.

That will irritate some state workers, at least those still reading the paper, as many said they were dropping their subscriptions in protest.

It is important – if ultimately unsatisfying to the critics – to put what the paper is doing in context.

The database was part of a comprehensive package built around Tuesday's excellent front-page story by reporter Phillip Reese that examined the acceleration of raises in state salaries, particularly at the highest levels, and the growing gap between those making the most and those making the least.

The attention, of course, almost immediately turned to the searchable database, and it's evident many of the people who complained to my office never read the story.

Many state employees were shocked, even though, as lots said, they knew the information was public record.

At first, I thought the paper could have done a better job of alerting readers about what was coming.

Editor Melanie Sill talked about the upcoming salary story and database in her column last Sunday, which was more focused on The Bee's overall effort to expand the number of databases available at sacbee.com.

She then wrote a message to readers addressing some specific complaints lodged by state workers. The message was posted online the day the story was published and printed in the paper the next day.

You can see it at sacbee.com/fromtheeditor, and it would be redundant to repeat it here. The point is, her explanation did little to diminish the volume or tone of complaints.

It's clear to me now that no amount of reader preparation or warning would have stopped or slowed the deluge.

A significant number of state employees fault the paper for making the information so readily available, because those who want to know "should have to do the 'homework,' " to find it, in the words of one employee.

They castigated the paper as irresponsible for making it easy to find the information by simply inputting someone's last name.

Well, that's ludicrous. It's the paper's job to make public information easier to find, and digital technology has given it tools to make that happen in ways unfathomable a decade ago.

This is what the newspaper does: It gathers and disseminates public information.

In fact, in some ways, The Bee is late to the party.

The state of California already publishes an online directory of workers at www.cold.ca.gov.

Google, Zabasearch.com and other online entities will turn up more information about most anyone than The Bee's state salary database.

Sacramento's Capitol Weekly regularly publishes the salaries of those who work in the Legislature. At least three states – Oklahoma, Iowa and Georgia – have searchable salary databases of government workers.

Newspapers across the country maintain similar searchable databases, including those in Lansing, Mich.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Springfield, Mo.; Sioux Falls, S.D.; Des Moines, Iowa; Indianapolis; Burlington, Vt.; Charlotte, N.C.; Huntington, W.Va.; Tulsa, Okla; Chico and others.

Elsewhere here in California, the San Jose Mercury News has a searchable database of government workers in Santa Clara County and many cities in its circulation area. The San Francisco Chronicle has a similar database for University of California employees.

Some state workers said The Bee's database should include only those making the highest salaries. I don't think that makes much sense. Except for a handful of high-profile state executives and appointees, most highly paid state employees aren't known by the public any more than a rank-and-file worker.

And, as Sill told me, it would be unfair to post some salaries but not others.

Quite a few workers have said The Bee should publish the salaries of its employees. Well, the paper and its corporate parent are private entities, so there's no requirement to do so except at the highest echelons. Simple as that.

And that gets to some of the core of what this debate is about.

If you work for the government, you are a public employee, with all that entails. You are paid by taxpayers, who are entitled to know how much you are paid, not in some abstract way but in real dollars and cents.

That's the deal. You know that going in. There's no bait-and-switch here.

It's up to the public to decide whether it is interested in the information and, at least initially, there's no question a lot of the public is.

About the writer:

• The Public Editor deals with complaints and concerns about The Sacramento Bee's content. His opinions are his own. You can contact the Public Editor by mail at P.O. Box 15779, Sacramento, CA 95852; or by calling him directly at (916) 321-1250.