MUSD teacher whines about salary disclosure

Kudos to the Sun Post for making the ballsy move to publish the salaries of Manteca city employees two weeks ago (January 30) and the salaries of MUSD teachers this last week (February 6). In an uncertain economy where ordinary people are getting laid off and fired and state and local governments face huge deficits, government workers think they should be immune from the same financial ills that ail the rest of us.

Today, the Manteca Bulletin printed a letter from a disgruntled school teacher who accuses the Sun Post of lacking journalistic ethics for printing the salaries of teachers. The letter writer whines about how the salaries weren't accurate because they included benefits, and teachers have loans to pay back for going to college, and they buy Girl Scout cookies and help your kids and wah wah wah. I could almost hear the violins playing in the background.

As the writer admits, the teachers' salaries are public record. These are public employees paid with taxpayer money. But HOW DARE anyone be told what those salaries are! Why, it's unethical! The letter writer doesn't seem to have a clue how much she's really paid because she swears that the amount shown in the Sun Post isn't near what she takes home or what she sees on her W-2 (and here I have to emit a big "DOH!" the writer is either naive or ignorant or just pretending to be). Apparently those golden benefits packages are free. And YES, the cost of benefits is part of your salary, you just aren't paying income taxes on it.

Maybe benefits should be taxed as income, then people would know exactly how much health care and retirement benefits cost instead of pretending that they're "free" somehow because they don't see the cost.