Nimble numbers on salary chart

I don’t like it when elected officials spin numbers, so please indulge me in a little backspin.

For decades, the Stamford Advocate has kicked off each new year by publishing a list of top city earners. There’s a slightly bitter aftertaste of voyeurism about the list, but it provides an equal measure of transparency. While city employees whose paychecks are exposed on the front page may shudder at the practice, I haven’t heard any whining from them either.

But the numbers are nimble, and easily manipulated. The list from a quarter century ago is topped by police chief George Mayer, who collected $148,807 in 1993 as he approached his retirement.

In those days, school administrators accounted for 63 spots on the hot 100. Right behind Mayer was the superintendent of schools, who earned $139,733.

Police don’t make an appearance until No. 19, with Francis Cronin turning a base salary of $52,647 into $92,217 with overtime pay. In the news article about the list, one city official spun the numbers by pointing out that the overall increase was smaller than it had been in recent years. That reasoning came from a Board of Finance member named Dannel Malloy.

A few years later, when Malloy was mayor, his office released a more complete version of the list at the newspaper’s request. This time, it also included the coin cops collected from extra duty gigs. The significant distinction is that such pay is not a burden for taxpayers, nor does it beef up pensions (though worker’s comp claims related to such assignments are another quagmire). It provides a truer sense of take-home pay, while raising questions about how much work is too much for anyone carrying a gun.

Police are usually restricted from exceeding 16-hour shifts, though plenty of them hit the ceiling on a frequent basis. I’ve worked my share of 16-hour days. They usually end with me riting lke tihs.

A few years later, we started making the same request of other surrounding towns. Norwalk didn’t blink, providing it in time for us to publish Jan. 2.

Greenwich officials were unable to include income from side jobs in gross pay, since they didn’t track the hours.

The Advocate tradition continued, usually published in the first days of January.

That ended this year, as Managing Editor Stephanie Borise’s request for the data hit a series of road blocks. Days, weeks and months passed, eventually drawing the explanation that Mayor David Martin had to review the list.

With May drawing to a close, Borise filed a complaint with the Freedom of Information Commission and alerted the mayor’s office about it with an email at 11:51 a.m. Tuesday. Twenty-eight hours and 51 minutes later, the information was issued in a news release (a first) from the mayor’s office, complete with the mayor’s endlessly entertaining analysis/spin.

Martin — who would top any chart of numbers wonks — declined to provide the number of full-time Stamford employees, but included everyone who drew a paycheck from the city, starting with someone whose total earnings were $20. Figures like these enabled him to claim the average pay of city earners — excluding the Board of Education — was $68,274. It’s like including your kid’s allowance in your median family income to try to get in a lower tax bracket.

He also boasted that no members of his cabinet cracked into the hot 100. That’s true if you include police extra-duty pay. The difference is massive. With the pay, there are 84 cops in the top 100. With only base pay and overtime, the figure dips to 36 and the mayor and his team show up on the tally.

I don’t really care about all the spinning. What I do care about is that decades of publishing the lists has failed to inspire better management of city staff, or a significant challenge to union contract benefits that are so easily exploited. I’m a big supporter of police, but no municipality should have five cops earning more than $300,000 and only three educators among the top 100 earners.

Spin all you want, but the wheel remains broken.