Look in your mailbox or in the Alaska Dispatch News starting August 13th for Municipality payroll. If you don’t get a copy, give us a call at 334-5853.
The Policy Forum opened the books on Anchorage employee payroll to inform and educate Anchorage citizens on the cost of public services. Some ask why are we doing this? Others believe it is an infringement on their privacy. Many question the validity of the data. Still others cannot believe public employees are compensated so well.
We provide this information to the community because the citizens are the employers who pay these public employees through their property taxes. When one pays for a service or product, one deserves to know how much that product/service will cost. Have you ever ordered a hamburger with fries and then been confronted with a bill of $100? Hopefully not. This is what transparency in government demands–you should know the cost of the government service in order to determine if it is a fair value.
We provide names of employees, not employee id numbers, because these are real people not just a number to be manipulated. Many of these employees have children, debts, and a desire to help citizens. When times get tough and budgets are cut, people are impacted by these cuts.
These data are provided by the Municipality of Anchorage through an Open Records request which is in State statute. Government entities are required to provide most data as long as it does not violate privacy laws and other exceptions.
Here is a portion of page 1 of the publication:
To view the entire payroll, go here.
We would like to provide taxpayers in other communities such as MatSu, Kenai, Fairbanks, and Juneau with payroll information delivered to their doors. If you would like to help with this effort, go to our homepage and click on the blue “Donate Today” button or send us a check made out to Alaska Policy Forum. We are a strictly volunteer organization which believes in liberty and limited government.