A civil engineer with the City of Oakland raked in $484,175 last year, making him the highest paid city employee for 2016.
The eye-popping figure, revealed by nonprofit Transparent California on Monday, appears to be the result of overtime. The engineer’s base salary was only $108,841 -- a healthy stipend to be sure, but far short of the nearly half a million dollars he eventually took home. Of the state’s more than 500,000 employees, he ranks fourth in overtime.
As Transparent California’s research director notes, the numbers still don’t make a whole lot of sense. Assuming he only works on business days, the man would have had to clock in over 22 hours a day, 365 days a year. A city spokeswoman has since confirmed that he does not only work on business days. That means he was working around 16 hours a day.
The spokeswoman added that demand for residential building permits has skyrocketed in recent years, increasing the man’s workload. But this appears to be nothing new for the engineer, who was making twice as much as then-Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown all the way back in 2002.
According to Transparent California, four other Oakland employees earned more than $400,000 last year.
Read the full report here.