Massachusetts' CTHRU Adds Payroll Data
April 09, 2018 by Melissa Crowe
Photo credit: Jim Bowen/Flickr
In a bold step toward improved transparency and oversight in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, payroll for the state's Troop F was moved from the airport's payroll system to the comptroller's CTHRU site in less than 48 hours last week. Socrata worked with the Massachusetts team to make the data transfer happen.
A story published by the Boston Herald revealed that eight state troopers had earned more than $1 million working at Logan Airport since 2014. Much of those earnings came in the form of overtime. This pay information was not on the state's CTHRU financial transparency site, where most state employees pay information is listed, due to a longstanding agreement where the Troop F salaries were handled by the airport through Massport.
Applauding the quick work done by his staff to move four years of salary data to CTHRU in less than two days, State Comptroller Tom Shack said, "It is incumbent on all state agency leaders to confirm that their agency payroll data is accurately reported in CTHRU and I'd like to thank officials from Massport, EOPSS, and the State Police who helped to correct this omission as quickly as possible." (Since this story originally published, Shack's term in office ended.)
Shack went on to emphasize that making data accessible to a wider audience, both internally and externally, reduces the risk of atypical pay practices, saying, "this is exactly why a tool like CTHRU is so important for transparency and accountability. I continue to encourage the public, media, academics and others to review all of our transparency data and raise questions when they arise."
The new site shows the total for payroll, in 2017, $32.5 million, as well as the total number of employees and the average salary.