ANN ARBOR – Most local officials do not think their workers are overpaid in terms of salary and wages, a study by the Center of Local, State and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan said. But many do think their workers get benefits that are more generous than the general public.
The survey is the latest salvo fired in the current fight over public employee pay and benefits. The study was done of local government officials, and came out about a week after Governor Rick Snyder issued his plain language balance sheet that triggered controversy in saying that public workers are compensated nearly twice as much as the average worker in the private sector.
The survey was completed by officials in more than 1,000 localities in the state. However, the data is almost a year old, since the survey was completed in the spring of 2010.
The officials were asked about pay to their workers and 65 percent of those responding said they thought the pay rates were about right. Some 25 percent said they thought the pay rates were too low. Just 6 percent thought the pay was too high.
Nearly one-third of the localities do not offer fringe benefits to their workers, according to the survey.
Of those that do offer fringe benefits, such as health insurance, 62 percent said they thought the benefits are at the right levels.
But the response was different from officials in the state’s largest communities, where 53 percent of the respondents said they thought the benefits paid their workers were too generous. In the smaller communities, just 18 percent of the respondents thought the benefits were too generous.
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