PublicSource wants you to know how your tax dollars are being spent. We believe it’s important to make the salaries of city, county and state employees easy for you to find because there are taxpayer dollars at stake.

Pennsylvania makes state salaries available online, and the figures are updated monthly. However, the information is not easily accessible to the public. It is only available to download as a PDF document of roughly 4,350 pages. Because the state uses a PDF format, users can’t sort or easily explore the data. Upon request, the data is available as a spreadsheet.

PublicSource received an export of the state salary data on PennWATCH, current as of Dec. 15, 2015.

The salary information contains an employee’s annual salary or hourly wage. An employee’s actual take-home pay may be higher or lower than this figure because overtime and other bonuses are not included. “Some salaries are paid with federal funds, tolls, or fees,” according to the state website.

Also, some employees do not take some or all of their salary. For instance, Gov. Tom Wolf does not personally receive the public salary he is allotted in this data. He donates it to charity.

Remember as you look at the salaries that some may seem lower than private-sector jobs, but public employees receive generous benefits and pensions.

Explore the state data and let us know if you find something we should report on.

Contact reporter Eric Holmberg at 412-315-0266 or at eholmberg@publicsource.org. Follow him on Twitter @holmberges.

2015_salaries-01

Top paid person in each department

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Natasha is director of audience & visuals strategy at Pittsburgh's Public Source. She runs the organization's audience and visual team. She manages social media, the website, brand strategy and works...