Thank you for a great 2020!

As 2020 comes to a close, I wanted to share some of the ways your support of Transparent California has helped us deliver on our mission of improving transparency in government.

While users have long been able to download agency data from our site, we implemented two features this year to provide additional context and potential for analysis to the raw data posted on TransparentCalifornia.com.

First, all agencies now have an “average by job title” feature, which will make it easy to compare the pay data across multiple agencies.

For example, the new feature shows that the average security officer working for the city of Los Angeles made $77,670 last year. Employees performing that same job for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, however, made $134,570.

Second, we added a feature that allows users to download their custom search results. Users interested in reviewing the compensation for all those with a job title of “police chief,” for example, now have the option to download that entire search result into an Excel spreadsheet.

Your support has also allowed us to investigate false or misleading claims made by those who defend the status quo and believe the only solution to the never-ending fiscal strain facing California governments is higher taxes.

A few of our most popular reports from this past year are below:

Your support has also allowed us to engage in litigation when necessary, including our recently filed lawsuit against the City of Riverbank and our ongoing, multi-year litigation against CalPERS.

Last, but most importantly, your support has allowed us to continue our never-ending quest to obtain updated, current data from over 2,500 unique government agencies statewide. To that end, we have our new research director Todd Maddison to thank, who works tirelessly with the rest of our team to ensure the site remains as updated and current as possible.

I could not be prouder of the team we have here, and the incredible results we achieve with comparatively few resources.

As a member of the Transparent California community, your support makes this possible, so thank you!

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