City employees rake in the dough

While state workers are taking pay cuts and paying more for their health insurance, city workers are raking in the dough.

Stats, obtained from the City of Olympia show that 84 employees made more than $100,000 a year in wages and bonuses in 2010. In addition, more than 225 city employees made more than $100,000 a year when salary, benefits and health insurance was included.

Most of those making more than $!00,000 were police and fire fighters who raked in the overtime pay. Some police officers made two additional months of wages in overtime alone. The city paid out $700,000 in over time pay for police, $555,000 for fire fighters and $303,000 for public work employees. In addition, police officers received bonuses for the year of 2 to 8 percent, based on an educational scale.

While state employees are being forced to pay more of their health insurance costs, the same is not true with City of Olympia employees. All 530 city employees had 100 percent of their health care paid. The city also paid 85 percent of the costs of health care for employee’s families.

These figures are based on 2010. When 2011 figures are released it’s expected that similar results will be found. And, while we haven’t yet broken down employee costs for the cities of Lacey and Tumwater, we can expect that they also echo the same theme – – that city employees continue to rake in the dough.