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City of Austin workers earning more than $100,000 a year were tallied at our request for a fact check in September 2014 (City of Austin chart).
At a forum in advance of November’s groundbreaking Austin election, a candidate for one of the 10 new district-specific seats said he favor placing council offices in each of the districts -- and, attorney Jay Wiley said, it’s affordable.
Wiley, running in District 6 in Northwest Austin, added: "We have almost 1,000 city employees that make six-figure salaries."
Does that add up?
Our editors took a look over information provided by the city to our inquiries and rated Wiley’s statement Mostly True. (An alert reader then pointed out Wiley got it right at a later forum.)
City spokeswoman Melissa Alvarado emailed us a chart indicating that as of Sept. 1, 2014, 879 workers earned from $100,089 to $304,657. To follow-up queries, Alvarado sent a chart listing 24 vacancies at that time for positions paying $100,000 or more. So, you could say the city had 903 positions paying six figures at the time Wiley spoke.
But Alvarado also said more workers were heading into the six-figure class thanks to 3.5 percent raises taking effect Sept. 21, 2014, (before the start of the new fiscal year in October). Upshot: 1,162 employees would be earning $100,000 or more. Plus, another 36 open positions would more than $100,000 each, Alvarado said.
More charts and explicit details appear with the fact check.
Our Sources
Truth-O-Meter article, "Austin City Council hopeful slightly off saying more than 1,000 city workers earn six-figure checks," PolitiFact Texas, Sept. 25, 2014 (corrected and updated Sept. 26, 2014)
