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Thursday, October 18, 2012

New Miami-Dade 'transparency website' lets taxpayers view county employees' salaries


On Monday, I sent an email requesting salary information for a county employee to Suzy Trutie, Miami-Dade County's Assistant Director of Communications

Thirteen minutes later, Trutie responded: "All County employees’ salaries are available online on the Transparency page, http://www.miamidade.gov/transparency/salaries.asp ."

Click on the link and you'll learn that, "The employee salary search lets you search County employee bi-weekly gross pay and adjusted gross pay as well as year-to-date gross and adjusted gross pay."



I'm not sure why this hasn't been reported by the Miami Herald, but it was mentioned in a post on Politifact.com back on August 15:
About one month after he won election, Gimenez unveiled a transparency website to the public on Aug. 1, 2011. The website has county budgets, financial reports and bondholder reports -- information that was already available on the county's website. But it also has a new component: an online checkbook showing disbursements. We tested out the checkbook, which shows amounts disbursed to various individuals and companies but doesn't provide an explanation of the expenditures. We can guess what some expenditures were for -- such as payments to Florida Power and Light or Bellsouth Communications -- but we have no idea from simply looking at the online checkbook what the expenditures for "HMF FL A LLC" or the "Cigarette Racing Team" were for. (The website does contain some warnings including that the data is unaudited and that the search is not a substitute for a public records request and provides a link to contact the county.)

The county plans to add more details to the checkbook -- including brief descriptions of expenditures -- but doesn't have a target date set, county spokeswoman Suzy Trutie said in an e-mail interview. Gimenez also plans to add salary information for all employees -- but no launch date has been set.

Gimenez doesn't get all the credit for the online checkbook. In 2010, Commissioner Bruno Barreiro was the prime sponsor of a resolution directing the county to post the register. Gimenez, county commission chairman at the time, was one of multiple co-sponsors and spoke in favor of it.


08.21.12 Public Records Expansion Website Plan



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