[CORRECTION] Know What Your Taxes Buy: The Value of Padre Dam

Corrected Padre Dam Salary on April 5 @ 2 p.m.

State Controller John Chiang recently updated his website showing the salary, pension benefits and other employee compensation for special districts in California, including , Grossmont Healthcare District and Heartland Fire.

Santee Patch had incorrectly reported that the highest annual salary in the new data goes to the general manager of Padre Dam, at $271,805. This information was inaccurate for a number of reasons, and was collected as of June 2010. 

"The General Manager position is not a classification position and is instead an at will position with a contract. Someone at the State took it upon themselves to put the $271,805 figure in the chart," clarified Karen Jassoy, CFO at Padre Dam.

"In a 2010 survey of water agencies, Padre Dam's general manager was among
the lowest paid general managers in the region- 15 were paid higher than him," she said.

One reason for the inflated salary number is that the general manager at the time retired in 2010 after working as Director of Finance and then general manager for over 13 years; the amount included his annual salary and partial payout for accrued sick and vacation time, according to Jassoy.

"Currently our new general manager is the lowest paid in the region. That would be apparent from the 2011 report."

You can see the full 2010 reports in the media box or search here.

The site was originally created by Controller Chiang in late 2010, after he ordered local governments to provide salary and other wage information for their employees to his office. .

The new posting is the latest in a series of wage updates for all of California’s 2,379 special districts.