Transparent California

08/29/2026

Great work by our friends and cousins in Government Transparency, CalMatters.org and Adam Echelman.

"Last fall, CalMatters submitted records requests to 16 University of California and California State University campuses, seeking information about payments to their Division I athletes, but many schools provided little or no information in response. The lawsuit states that taxpayers are entitled to know the names of players who have received money and the teams they play on.

“When public institutions distribute public resources, the public is entitled to know who receives those resources, in what amounts, and on what terms,” the lawsuit says. Stett Holbrook, a spokesperson for the UC system, said the UC will “respond appropriately in court” and that it takes the “California Public Records Act and student privacy obligations seriously.”

These payments were also not reported to Transparent California in our annual public records request for data on all compensation from the agencies.

Clearly an attempt by public agencies, in this case universities, to hide where some of our tax dollars are going.

CalMatters is suing UCLA after it refused to provide information about how much they are paying student athletes for promotional deals.

08/27/2026

A great example of the value of the Public Records Act and the need for us all to support organizations holding our government accountable.

Thanks to the Voice of San Diego for uncovering this!

"One of the records described a February 2025 incident where an administrative analyst who was unmuted during a county-sponsored cultural responsiveness training attended by about 75 attendees allegedly exclaimed “I thought this wasn’t going to be political, but what do you expect when it’s taught by a bunch of Black people"

https://voiceofsandiego.org/2026/08/25/racist-comments-outed-in-voice-records-request-dept-head-out/

08/23/2026

TransCal in the News!

"Transparent California’s Director of Research, Todd Maddison said in a statement, “As we see more tax increase proposals appearing, we’re focused on giving the People the data they deserve to see how their existing tax dollars are being spent, so they can make informed decisions at the ballot box.”"

Who said that?

That's right, WE did! And so do YOU, don't you?

August 21, 2026 – Six Santa Monica City employees earned more than half a million dollars in pay last year, excluding benefits, and were among the 71 municipal workers who made more than $350,000, according to data compiled by Transparent California.

08/21/2026

TransCal in the News!

"Public agencies must report salary and benefits data to the state controller’s office, but K‑12 school districts are not required to do so, and many don’t. BUSD did not file a report for 2024, the most recent year available on the Government Compensation in California website.

But a look at 2024 salaries from Transparent California, a public pay and pension database, provides some insight into compensation for district employees."

Thanks to Vanessa Arredondo and Berkeleyside for doing such an exceptional job of using our data!

If you’d like to see more data like this, you can help by sponsoring data collection for your favorite public agency. Find that agency on http://transparentcalifornia and click "Sponsor This Agency." That not only provides funding but prioritizes the collection of the agency’s data in our systems.

https://www.berkeleyside.org/2026/08/19/berkeley-unified-executive-salaries-bay-area-superintendents

Send a message to learn more

08/19/2026

..... and from the California Globe this morning.

"Our team has collected almost 3 million compensation records documenting $278 billion in total pay and benefits, and 1.5 million pension records with $64 billion in payments. Since launching over a decade ago Transparent California has now collected and posted over 50 million compensation and pension records. All available free at http://transparentcalifornia.com."

https://californiaglobe.com/fr/transparent-california-completes-2024-compensation-state-data-collection/

Transparent California Completes 2024 Compensation State Data Collection! The inordinate delays allowed by the state, and resistance from some of the agencies involved, is why we’re just now wrapping up 2024 By California Globe, August 18, 2026 4:18 pm 18 Aug 2026 4:18 pm Transparent California, t...

08/19/2026

For immediate release:

Transparent California Completes 2024 Compensation Data Collection!

Transparent California, the state’s largest database of public pay and pension data, has now obtained 2024 data covering over 93% of employee compensation and pension payments in our state. This includes state, county, city, school district, and special records.

Our team has collected almost 3 million compensation records documenting $278 billion in total pay and benefits, and 1.5 million pension records with $64 billion in payments. Since launching over a decade ago Transparent California has now collected and posted over 50 million compensation and pension records. All available free at http://transparentcalifornia.com.

This year we’ve made that site easier to use. Users report they love our site changes and web traffic has seen a tremendous increase, to over 2 million page views a month.

Did you know in 2024 149,065 public employees made total compensation exceeding a quarter-million dollars a year?

For more detail on what we’ve found in this data, go to our website and click on News and Updates for a summary.

And if you have a specific interest in an agency of our government, click “Get notified” on that agency’s page and you’ll get a notice when new data is posted.

Transparent California’s data collection schedule is determined by the State Controller’s Office reporting requirements. The inordinate delays allowed by the state, as well as significant resistance from some of the agencies involved, is why we’re just now wrapping up 2024.

Assembly Bill AB1821, if passed, would extend the time for a response from 14 calendar days to 14 “business days”, effectively be three weeks. This may sound small, but that deadline only applies to a “response”, not to provision of the actual records requested. Our legislature continues to ignore the current legislation has no defined deadline for production of the actual records, nor does it impose any penalty on agencies for delaying the process (or declining to respond altogether) even if the requester files a lawsuit and wins.

Transparent California’s Director of Research, Todd Maddison, notes “As we see more tax increase proposals appearing, we’re focused on giving the People the data they deserve to see how their existing tax dollars are being spent, so they can make informed decisions at the ballot box.”

Transparent California depends on the generosity of individual donors to enable this collection. Anyone with a specific interest in a particular agency can sponsor collection of their data and support the effort to provide the public with this service.

https://transparentcalifornia.com/news/transparent-california-2024-data-wrap-up

We've completed gathering 2024 data, here's what it says!

08/12/2026

A good look by the Voice of San Diego at "The Plan to Improve Contract Oversight"

"“The county would move toward a shared operating model with consistent expectations, documented responsibilities, assignment tracking, escalation procedures and a strong executive visibility,” Butler said. “That clarity is what allows the governance structure to become an accountability structure" in San Diego County

Which all sounds good, except for one thing - it's stupid and unlikely to do much.

Note no mention of true accountability - for the government management tasked with oversight of contracts. Which means nothing will happen.

There are effective ways to manage contracts. Private industry learned those ways a long time ago. Establish a clear objective, set up a budget, establish objective metrics to judge whether the objectives are being met, then track that periodically - and either bonus the responsible manager if they do well, or cut their pay (and possibly terminate them) if not.

It's that simple. But that would require a government who understood their job was to provide services to residents in a cost effective way, and that's not the government we have....

The county has a policy of automatically purging most emails after two years – and that could affect a criminal case involving a former county contractor. Refresher: Our Lisa Halverstadt […]

08/12/2026

Some great reporting by Darwin Bond-Graham at the Oaklandside illuminating the massive overtime provided to employees in Oakland, by management who apparently does not understand the importance of providing the best services for city residents.

Imagine if everyone just looked up their local government on Transparent California? What would they see?

Once again, overtime ensured that police officers dominated the ranks of Oakland's top earners.

08/11/2026

The New Transparent California Website Is Here!

Transparent California's new website is live. It's faster, mobile friendly, and 100% ad free, giving 10 million users a clearer look at government pay and spending.

If you'd like to support the kind of government transparency and accountability we all need, we'd like to stay ad-free by increasing our donor levels to avoid having to create revenue that way.

There are over 4000 public agencies in California, collecting that data (making - and babysitting - 4000 public records requests) can take most of a year. And the occasional lawsuit....

If you'd like to see a particular agency's data collection prioritized in our schedule, you can sponsor data collection for that agency also, which bumps them up on the collection schedule.

Thanks for your help and support!

Transparent California's new website is live. It's faster, mobile friendly, and 100% ad free, giving 10 million users a clearer look at government pay and spending.

05/04/2026

A recent interview of our Director of Research done by Philip Stemler, a great parent activist in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District - NMUSD school district.

Can you imagine the revolution we'd see in quality of K12 education if we put our superintendents on a bonus plan that gave them a significant bump if they actually improved education?

But that's not what our education system is designed to do, right? It's all about making sure the adults are taken care of, not the kids...

Transparent California's Director of Research, Todd Maddison, on shining a light on school spending.