Florida Governor Rick Scott is the 34th most popular governor in the United States, according to a recent national survey by Morning Consult. His approval rating increased by 8 percentage points between September 2016 and April 2017.
There could be many reasons for the discrepancies between Scott’s local and national popularity, and his fluctuating approval rating. One factor could be that he tells the truth—most of the time. A Politifact scorecard concludes that Scott’s statements are true, mostly true or half true 60 percent of the time.
One promise Scott—a millionaire hospital executive turned governor—has kept since his November 2010 election is that he will not take a salary as governor. An analysis of the Florida state payroll finds that Scott is the state’s lowest paid employee. He takes home 12 cents a year.
What else does a look at the state payroll, made available online by the government accountability website Florida Has a Right to Know, tell us? For starters, not every state employee is as willing to spread the wealth as Scott is.
Florida Commissioner of Education Pamela Stewart will take home $276,000 this year. That’s six times more than the salary of the average Department of Education employee.
Physicians across several state agencies unsurprisingly also clean up well. Several senior physicians who offer mental health services for the Department of Children and Families take home almost $200,000 annually. But the median salary in that agency is just over $26,000, and the average is close to $35,000.
The highest paid employees in each of the state’s 20 judicial circuits are the state attorneys and public defenders, who each make $154,140. The average salary in each judicial circuit ranges from $45,000 to $56,000, with employees of the 16th judicial circuit in in Monroe County taking home the most money.
The Department of Health’s County Health Department is forking out the most overall in annual salaries, spending $342 million this year. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the Florida Department of Management Service pays just one salary in its state employee leasing agency at about $57,000.
What do we find when we break down salaries by agency, instead of by budget entity?
The top three employers in the state, according to the data set, are the Department of Corrections, the Department of Health, and the Justice Admission Commission. Of the 102,436 employees listed on the state payroll, 21,839 work for the Department of Corrections. At the Department of Health, 11,875 people make a collective $485 million, or an average of $41,000. There are 9,478 people at the Justice Admission Commission, which houses the 20 judicial circuits we looked at earlier. Their combined salaries are $459 million. They will take home about $773 million this year. The Florida Department of Citrus has the fewest number of people on the payroll—28 people who collectively take home $1.8 million.
Not only does Florida have an entire agency dedicated to growing citrus fruits, it also has a Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. There, 2,016 employees make $91 million.
The biggest discrepancy between the average and median salary is at the State Courts System, where the average employee makes $69,000 but the median salary is $46,000. There, the highest paid employee takes home $162,000, while the lowest paid employee makes just under $9,000.
The data set is flawed and incomplete, though. It does not include salaries for legislative, state university system, county, municipal, and benefits-only employees. There are typographical errors in the names of the budget entities. For example, there are listings for both “Exec Dir & Suport Services” and “Exec Dir & Support Service.”
Still, there’s a wealth of data to be analyzed. And questions to be asked about how wealth is distributed.
Happy digging!
Check out my analysis of the data here.