Editorial: Annual salary reports on what’s paid by taxpayers

You pay your taxes, but do you know how much of those tax dollars you are paying employees in local public bodies? The hard-earned funds go from your pocket or purse through the public bodies into the hands of employees.
It’s time for our annual salary reports to our readers to keep them informed. In January of each year for the past two decades we have been reporting on how much taxpayers are spending to pay employees in their local governments.
Every year we issue Freedom of Information Act requests to the school district, charter school, district library, city, and two townships. Diane Madigan and her husband Dr. Carl Johnson, who used to live on Bak Road in Van Buren Township and were active in township affairs, work on getting the numbers ready for printing. They now live in Tennessee, but with the internet, that’s just next door. We appreciate their help a lot.
Diane likes to show taxpayers how much the salaries have increased each year, so she computes that and puts it at the bottom of the lists. It’s always interesting to see.
This is a service to our readers who care about their local government and what’s going on. Our readers can decide if the numbers are fair compensation for the services received. Or, they can decide it’s time to start coming to meetings to observe first-hand what is happening.