Daniel Walters data visualization
(For an interactive chart intended for laptop or desktop users, scroll down)
In his resignation letter to the city last year, Spokane Fire Battalion Chief David Heizer was upset. He refused to take the vaccine — incorrectly claiming that the "unvaccinated are no more risk to the public than the vaccinated" — and objected to the city's refusal to accommodate his religious exemption.
He also predicted that the city's deciding to strictly enforce the state's vaccine mandate for firefighters will "increase the financial burden placed on the public as overtime costs skyrocket."
That, at least, was accurate. Already insanely high overtime costs for the Fire Department were boosted to ridiculous levels toward the end of the year.
But it was only after we requested records on the compensation for every city employee in Spokane that we learned that, even though he left on Oct. 15 — cutting his yearly salary short by two and a half months — Heizer still ended up being Spokane's most highly paid city employee.
In fact, all combined, he finished the year with over $293,000, about $25,000 ahead of Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl, who lingered in second place.
While $55,000 was from overtime and $116,000 was from Heizer's regular salary, the $121,000 was from "other pay."
Chad Childears, another fire battalion chief, says that there are a number of ways that a base salary could be boosted in a battalion chief's contract — such as a 6 percent bonus for their education level. But there's most likely a much bigger factor: When battalion chiefs retire, they can cash out their accrued vacation time, and part of their accrued sick leave time. And while regular firefighters are more limited in how much vacation time they can accrue, a battalion chief isn't nearly as limited.
Heizer, Childears says, was "frugal with his vacation use." By the time Heizer left, he could have had many, many hundreds of unused vacation hours saved up. He leaves, and he gets all that paid back at once.
In other words, if you want to find what Spokane city employees are making, you can't just look at their base salaries, or even their salaries plus their overtime. You've got to look at it all.
We here at the Inlander celebrated tax season by building the "Spokane Municipal Salar-O-Tron," an interactive data visualization tool that lets you see what any city employee — from the most short-lived Riverfront Park summer worker to fire and police chiefs — made in 2019, 2020 and 2021:
HOW TO USE THE SALAR-O-TRON
- The X-axis shows an employee's total pay, while the Y-axis shows the overtime and other sources of pay outside of an employee's regular salary. The larger the dot on the graph, the higher the base salary.- Hover over a dot to see which employee the dot represents, along with a slew of details, including the rank that they're paid. (The interactive features are not intended for mobile phones — stick with a laptop or desktop to get the most out of it.)
- Click the buttons on the upper right to switch between 2019, 2020 and 2021. Watch how COVID, wildfires and the vaccine mandate causes the Fire Department's overtime to explode like a geyser.
- Search for a specific employee by typing searching in the last name, first name (Woodward, Nadine) format.
- Or, filter the whole chart by selecting a specific category, like Economic Development, Fire, or City Council.
- Hover over the dotted and dashed vertical lines to put their salaries in perspective, marking the city's median household income, the median city employee wage and the top 5 percent threshold for the entire county. Filter by category, and you can see the median employee wage change to reflect that category. Fun!
- A few caveats to keep in mind: First, this is gross pay — it doesn't include the amount deducted for taxes. Second, if an employee leaves halfway through or joins with only a month to go, only what they were actually paid will show up on the chart each year. And the figures don't necessarily represent what the taxpayers have to pay for each employee. It doesn't include the cost of benefits. And overtime spent fighting wildfires, for example, are reimbursed by the state and federal government.
WHAT WE LEARNED
- Two years ago, Mayor David Condon was the 18th-highest-paid employee in the City of Spokane, making a total of $167,000. Last year, Mayor Nadine Woodward made the same amount of money — and she's only the 151st-highest-paid employee in the city.
- In 2021, 1,901 employees made more than $52,600, the median income in Spokane.
- The median city of Spokane employee made more than $69,620 (and remember the list includes every minor Parks and Recreation temp/seasonal employee). That's less than in 2020, but more than in 2019.
- The median city library employee makes almost exactly the Spokane median income. (There are also library employees classified as "pages" which we are choosing to interpret as an adorable book-related pun.)
- Fire Battalion Chief David Heizer was also the highest-paid city employee in 2019, thanks to an extensive amount of overtime. In 2020, the highest-paid employee was Battalion Chief Michael Bacon. In 2021, he also quit due to the vaccine mandate, but still managed to be the fourth-highest-paid employee, directly behind his son, Fire Lt. Brandon Bacon.
-The first 60 highest-paid employees all work for police, fire, or the city's dispatch center. The highest-paid employee who is not a firefighter is Municipal Judge Kristin O'Sullivan.
- Why is "other pay" often so high for the police department? Two big reasons. First, when the police contract was settled last year, officers got compensated for all the back pay they missed out on while they were without a contract.
But there's another, even more interesting reason: Police can work what's called "extra duty." Say that Apple wants extra security in front of their store. They can either hire a private security firm, or they can hire the police on their days off. Instead of paying individual police officers directly, however, Apple pays the police department. Effectively, the police volunteer to work overtime, but they're not being paid out of tax revenue. Other organizations that hire extra-duty police officers include Temple Beth Shalom, Gonzaga, and Life Center church.
- Look at Officer Michael Brunner, a tiny blue dot at the top of the chart. He only made about $22,000 in his regular salary last year, but made over $175,000 in other sources of pay. Why was his salary so low, and his other sources of pay so high?
Well, in March 2020, he was driving his patrol car 65 mph in a 30-mph zone near Deaconess just before he T-boned another car, injuring the passengers. The police initially gave the driver of the other car a ticket before Brunner was eventually charged with felony vehicular assault.
But, eventually, he pleaded down to a "reckless driving" misdemeanor and — after an internal affairs investigation — not only got to keep his job, but got more than a year of back pay returned to him.
- Together, Craig Meidl and his wife, police Capt. Tracie Meidl, made nearly $1.2 million dollars in total pay over the last three years. This year, Chief Meidl made nearly $69,000 in "other pay." According to police spokeswoman Julie Humphreys, that's partly pay tied to the Spokane Police Guild contract, and partly because he decided to cash in some of his vacation or sick/leave.
- The least-paid worker in the city of Spokane — 2,883 out of 2,883 — was a temp/seasonal employee for the Parks and Recreation department. He or she made just $45.50.
