N.J. Newspaper Posts Salaries of Public Employees

By: A database unveiled Thursday by a newspaper allows anyone on a computer to learn how much nearly 275,000 public employees are being paid.

The new offering from the Asbury Park Press of Neptune includes judges, town administrators and state officials. It can be searched by name or agency.

The Web site includes nearly all workers who get a government paycheck, the newspaper said. It covers all employees enrolled in the state's Public Employees' Retirement System, the largest of the state's eight pension systems.

The salaries of thousands of public school teachers and administrators are on a linked site.

Among those who are not in PERS are 43,000 local fire and law enforcement personnel.

Also not enrolled in PERS are about 2,800 employees at Rutgers University, including school president Richard L. McCormick, who makes $525,000, the newspaper said.

The biggest salary in PERS -- $524,999 -- belongs to Bruce C. Vladeck, interim president of the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, which is under federal supervision.

The newspaper's site also provides a link to 263 lawyers, municipal court judges and other government employees who held three or more jobs and were paid more than $100,000 last year.

These so-called "pension tackers" get higher pensions at retirement because of the total they are paid in salaries.