Show us public payrolls

In the real world, the employer knows how much an employee earns, what benefits the employee receives, and what the employee’s pension will be upon retirement. It’s a simple rule: He or she who pays the tab owns the payroll.

But in the world of make-believe – the public sector – the employer rarely knows how much an employee earns, what benefits the employee receives, and is prohibited by law from looking at a retiree’s pension stub.

In other words, you Mr., Mrs. or Ms. Taxpayer are more often than not out of luck when it comes to knowing how much of your hard-earned dollars go into the pockets of those feeding at the public trough.

And, given that more than 70 percent of the operating budgets of most public entities, especially government, is gobbled up by wages and benefits, private-sector taxpayers are shelling out money to the public sector on blind faith.

With that reality adding to the growing distrust of the public purse-dippers, this headline served as an antidote to the poison: “Mahoning posts expenditures to online checkbook.”

Hallelujah! Sept. 25, the day of the miracle.

The headline appeared on the front page of The Vindicator and opened the door to a story that was bound to warm the cockles of a cynic’s heart. Here was the opening paragraph:

“Mahoning County Auditor Ralph T. Meacham and Ohio’s State Treasurer Josh Mandel have released Mahoning County’s expenditures on ohiocheckbook.com.

“When Mandel came before the Mahoning County commissioners in April to promote the government accountability program, Meacham announced that Mahoning County would be the first Ohio county to join the Internet-based system to provide financial information to taxpayers.”

The keyword: “Expenditures.”

Personnel costs

And, what is the largest expenditure in the operating budget of a public-sector entity?

Personnel costs, led by wages and benefits.

The online checkbook offered the promise of information long hidden from the view of private sector taxpayers in Mahoning County.

The Vindicator story detailed what Meacham and Mandel, both Republicans, had done to further the cause of transparency in county government.

Last year, when the state treasurer launched OhioCheckbook.com with hundreds of millions of entries of state revenue and expenses dating back to 2008, the category that received the most attention was personnel costs.

All state employees’ and public school and state university employees’ salaries are on the website.

In 2014, the state government agency that spent the most tax dollars to meet its payroll was the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections. It shelled out a whopping $929,515,037.61 to cover wage and benefit obligations to its prison workers throughout Ohio.

Thus, readers of The Vindicator story had every reason to believe that Mahoning County would follow in the state’s footsteps.

But, then came these two paragraphs that turned hope into despair:

“Excluded from the website are confidential checks, such as welfare checks, and certain confidential law enforcement and court-related checks, Meacham said.

“Paychecks written to individual county employees and their annual salaries are not currently on the website.”

A kidney punch if ever there were one.

“We have more work to do on that,” Meacham said.

It certainly didn’t take long for this political novice – he had never run for office when he won the county auditor’s race – to learn the art of obfuscation.

Last year, when state Treasurer Mandel came to town to join county commissioners, the auditor and others in announcing that Mahoning County would be the first county to put its checkbook online, The Vindicator, in an editorial, warned officials that failure to put the payrolls of all departments, agencies and offices on the web would be seen as a violation of public trust.

Indeed, the editorial took to task Audrey Tillis, county budget director, who hedged when she was asked if the website would contain current payroll information concerning specific employees and any raises and bonuses they receive.

“Eventually, we would like to probably have some of that out there, but we want to take it step by step,” Tillis said.

The newspaper wasn’t impressed and made it clear that county residents would not take kindly to being given the runaround.

And the runaround is exactly what private sector taxpayers are getting in their demand to know how their money is being spent.

Why are the payrolls so important? Here’s how the editorial addressed that question:

“ … local residents will have the ability to review the list of employees and figure out if they got their jobs the old-fashioned way (via family ties or politics), or possess legitimate qualifications for serving the public. Taxpayers will find out just how financially ‘rewarding’ government service can be.”

County Auditor Meacham has had a political honeymoon since he was sworn in. He replaced the corrupt and morally deficient Michael Sciortino, a Democrat.

But now, residents are left to wonder if the retired business executive has been co-opted by the corrupters of Mahoning County politics.

Meacham will be judged by how long it takes him to put all the payrolls on the website. That should have been his first order of business.