What a difference a year makes when it comes to the number of those earning $100,000 or more in Pennsylvania’s state government.

In 2019, the commonwealth had 9,751 state employees with earnings in the six figures. There are now 680 new members in the $100,000 Club, up from 9,071 the year before, an increase of 7.5 percent, a PennLive analysis has found.

About one in every 11 state employees is a member of the $100,000 Club, according to PennLive’s annual review of six-figure earners in all three branches of state government. PennLive produced the analysis based on data provided by the governor’s Office of Administration, the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Counts and independent agencies.

The total number of six-figure earners could fill the seats in the Harrisburg Senators’ ballpark, FNB Field, one and a half times. Put another way, that is enough people to fill the Hershey Theatre more than five times over.

Membership in the $100,000 Club has grown by 26.7% since Gov. Tom Wolf took office in 2015. Combined, last year’s $100,000 Club members’ earnings account for more than $1.23 billion of state government’s payroll costs, up from $1.14 billion in 2018.

To be clear, employee earnings can reflect more than their salary. In some cases, what pushes their earnings into the $100,000 level (and beyond) can be overtime pay, longevity payments, bonuses, leave payout, grievance awards, extra duty pay, and more.

What taxpayers need to keep in mind, though, is no matter what form their compensation takes, it all comes out of public funds. It may have come from tax receipts, fees, tolls, agency earnings and federal funds or some other public source, but the bottom line, it is all taxpayers’ money.

State System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Greenstein delivers his state of the system address, January 15, 2020. Greenstein, the head of a system of 14 state-owned colleges and universities, earned over $434,848 in 2019, making him third in Pennsylvania state government. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.com

Highest earners

For the first time, three people in Pennsylvania’s state government had earnings of $400,000 or more. They topped the six-figure club.

Holding the top spot is Dr. Michael Brogna, a supervisory physician for the Department of Human Services, who has 29 years of service there. He earned $450,439. That includes a $183,473 salary along with overtime and other payments that are considered state taxable income. He was the third highest earner in 2018.

Coming in the second spot is James Grossman, chief investment officer at the Public School Employees’ Retirement System. He earned $445,542 in 2019, which reflects his salary alone.

Grossman is in charge of $48.8 billion in net assets that pay or promise retirement income to 520,000 retired or current employees. Some $26.6 billion of that is managed internally. Grossman has been in that job in a permanent or acting capacity since 2013.

The third highest earner is State System of Higher Education Chancellor Dan Greenstein, who came on the job in September 2018. He had earnings of $434,848. That includes his $378,834 salary, along with a housing and auto allowance.

Greenstein is the CEO of the 14 state universities that educate about 96,000 students. He is spearheading the redesign the system to ensure each of those universities remain or become financially sustainable and meet employers’ workforce needs.

Rounding out the top 10 highest earners were more doctors, a university president, and deputy chief investment officers.

The review of 2019 earnings also shows 22 employees with earnings in the $300,000 range, one less than the previous year, and 160 in the $200,000 range, the same number as in 2018.

State Attorney General Josh Shaipro, Auditor General Eugene DePasquale and state Treasurer Joe Torsella following the inauguration of Pa. Gov. Tom Wolf in January 2019. Each of the three earns about $160,000 annually. None of the three ranked among the top 1,000 earners in Pennsylvania's state government. Joe Hermitt | jhermitt@pennlive.com

Putting it into perspective

The folks who qualify for the $100,000 Club represent a small portion of the state government workforce. The vast majority of the 105,285 salaried and wage employees who work in the three branches of state government can only dream of having six-figure earnings.

According to the governor’s workforce statistics, the average full-time salary of employees who work under the governor’s jurisdiction, which accounts for more than 80,000 of the total commonwealth workforce, was $58,332. That puts Pennsylvania 19th in the nation in this category for 2017, the most recent available from the U.S. Census Bureau.

For further context, that is slightly below the median household income of $60,905 for 2018, the most recent year that statistic is available from the Census Bureau.

Researchers and analysts are all over the map with their conclusions about public and private sector compensation comparisons.

Steve Herzenberg, executive director of the liberal-leaning Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg, said when looking at the disparity between the top earners in the public sector versus the private, there’s no comparison.

He points to a Philadelphia Business Journal ranking of Philadelphia area CEO salaries in 2018. The report found Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, for example, took in more than $35 million. That is about the same amount as the combined earnings of state government’s top 135 members of the latest $100,000 Club.

“Outsized compensation is a private sector not public sector problem. Private sector CEOs now make more than 200 times as much as typical workers compared to 15-20 times a half century ago,” he said. “The top 1% [of] incomes in the private sector are going up fast again.”

Studies done by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute suggest on the whole, public-sector workers earn less than those in the private sector, despite the fact that more public workers have a four-year college degree (or higher) than private workers.

However, when factoring other benefits and the value of the perception that public sector workers have more job security than those in the private sector, the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College concludes compensation is about even between the two sectors.

A 2012 Citizens Against Government Waste report found that state governments pay on average is 6.2% more per hour in wages and benefits, including pension benefits, than the private sector for 22 major occupational categories that exist in both sectors. Additionally, the report found that no state government pays its employees on par or below what the private sector pays.

But a data analysis shared by Nathan Benefield, vice president of the conservative-leaning Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, suggests otherwise.

This graphic prepared by the Harrisburg-based conservative-leaning Commonwealth Foundation concludes state government workers under Gov. Tom Wolf's jurisdiction are faring better than private sector workers when comparing their combined salary and benefits packages.

Benefield found private sector employees’ total compensation package amounts to a third less than those of employees working under the governor’s jurisdiction in Pennsylvania. The most striking difference, he said, is in the area of benefits.

“The biggest problem isn’t that some state employees make a good salary. The problem is those salaries and raises seem unconnected to performance, aren’t tied to merit, come with unaffordable and unsustainable benefit plans, and are often negotiated behind closed doors between Governor Wolf and campaign contributors,” he said.

The campaign contributors he is referring to are labor unions representing public sector employees.

Given those various views, readers will have to draw their own conclusions about the disparity issue.

But one more point needs to be addressed since it has been brought up in previous years of PennLive’s annual report on the $100,000 Club.

The employees of the state’s largest universities – Penn State, the University of Pittsburgh and Temple - are not included in this earnings analysis because they are not part of state government.

Those universities do receive state funding. It makes up just a small percentage of their total budget. Still, they are considered state-related universities. The 14 universities in the State System of Higher Education - referred to as the state-owned universities - are included in PennLive’s analysis.

For the record, according to the latest salary (not their full compensation) information from 2017 that Penn State, Pitt and Temple are statutorily required to provide, here is who topped the list at each of those schools (hint: they are all head football coaches): James Franklin ($1,610,000) at Penn State; Patrick Narduzzi ($3,142,424) at Pitt and William Collins ($2,146,640) at Temple.

In December, Franklin signed a new, six-year contract. The pact will pay him $44.2 million before bonuses, or an average of $7.37 million per year over the course of the contract, which ends in 2025.

Jan Murphy may be reached at jmurphy@pennlive.com. Follow her on Twitter at @JanMurphy.

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