Top 25 Massachusetts Employee Salaries

On Monday, Massachusetts unveiled a pretty amazing database on government spending that they’re calling “Open Checkbook.” It’s got just about everything a data freak or government conspiracy theorist could possibly want: Spending breakdowns for each department, vendor payments, and salary and pension numbers.

Naturally, I went for the juiciest numbers — the salaries of the highest-paid employees in the state. It’s often the case that big-time athletic coaches are the biggest earners (See: Texas), but fittingly, in a state full of egg-heads, educators are making the biggest paychecks. Sure, most of them happen to work at the UMass Medical School, so they’re doctors/educators, but we’re going to count it. And don’t feel too bad for the coaches: Derek Kellogg, head coach of the UMass Minutemen basketball, is the 6th biggest earner.

As for the guy actually running the state? Governor Deval Patrick is way down the list — by the time the end of the year rolls around, he’ll have pulled in $139,832. A tidy sum, but maybe he should have skipped Harvard Law and gone to medical school instead.

Update: Steve Poftak, a fellow Boston Daily contributor, pointed out to me that the Pioneer Institute (where he’s the director of research) launched a very similar “open government” site three years ago, called MassOpenbooks. The state’s site has the benefit of being constantly updated, but MassOpenBooks has some neat visualization tools—like the bar charts showing year-to-year growth in department salaries.