Marin County governments still hide compensation for public officials and employees from the public, a Marin County Grand Jury report concluded.
“Many Marin public agencies fail to make the compensation for their elected officials and employees fully transparent on their public websites, despite state legal requirements and past Grand Jury recommendations that they do so,” the report said.
California law requires most public agencies to report the annual compensation of their “elected officials, officers, and employees” to the state controller’s office, which posts this information on its Government Compensation in California website at publicpay.ca.gov (Public Pay).
Each local agency with a website also is legally required to post “in a conspicuous location . . . information on the annual compensation of its elected officials, officers and employees.
All of Marin’s cities, towns, and major agencies have websites, so each of them is required to post annual compensation data, and the public should be able to easily find this information.
The 34 agency websites audited by the Grand Jury included those of the County of Marin, Marin’s 11 cities and towns, 10 sanitary districts, 9 fire districts, and 3 water districts. The Grand Jury wanted to know if the legal disclosure requirements were met and if detailed information about compensation and benefits for elected officials was readily available.
The Grand Jury’s latest investigation revealed that a great majority of audited agency websites failed to comply fully with legal compensation disclosure requirements.
Compensation information was often difficult to find and outdated. Information on actual compensation paid to elected officials was also missing, difficult to find, or insufficient. In many cases, it was difficult to find information about compensation policies for elected officials.
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