Background graphic: Transparent CA
State’s largest free database of public employee pay and pension information
New website is live – faster, mobile friendly and 100% ad free, giving 10 million users a clearer look at government pay and spending.
By Transparent California Staff
Transparent California, the state’s largest database of public pay and pension data, has now obtained 2024 data covering over 93% of employee compensation and pension payments in our state. This includes state, county, city, school district, and special records. Our team has collected almost 3 million compensation records documenting $278 billion in total pay and benefits, and 1.5 million pension records with $64 billion in payments. Since launching over a decade ago Transparent California has now collected and posted over 50 million compensation and pension records. All available free at http://transparentcalifornia.com.
This year we’ve made that site easier to use. Users report they love our site changes and web traffic has seen a tremendous increase, to over 2 million page views a month.
Did you know in 2024 149,065 public employees made total compensation exceeding a quarter-million dollars a year? For more detail on what we’ve found in this data, go to our website and click on News and Updates for a summary.
And if you have a specific interest in an agency of our government, click “Get notified” on that agency’s page and you’ll get a notice when new data is posted.
Transparent California’s data collection schedule is determined by the State Controller’s Office reporting requirements. The inordinate delays allowed by the state, as well as significant resistance from some of the agencies involved, is why we’re just now wrapping up 2024.
Assembly Bill AB1821, if passed, would extend the time for a response from 14 calendar days to 14 “business days”, effectively be three weeks. This may sound small, but that deadline only applies to a “response”, not to provision of the actual records requested. Our legislature continues to ignore the current legislation has no defined deadline for production of the actual records, nor does it impose any penalty on agencies for delaying the process (or declining to respond altogether) even if the requester files a lawsuit and wins.
Transparent California’s Director of Research, Todd Maddison, notes “As we see more tax increase proposals appearing, we’re focused on giving the People the data they deserve to see how their existing tax dollars are being spent, so they can make informed decisions at the ballot box.”
Photo: Transparent CA
On July 10, the organization announced its new website.
A faster, ad free tool that makes government salaries and spending easier to find, and harder to hide.
Ten million people a year visit Transparent California to look up a city salary, a pension payout, or an overtime number that doesn’t add up. For a decade, that’s been the only way for regular taxpayers to see where their money actually goes.
The old site made that harder than it needed to be. It was cluttered with ads, slow to load, and difficult to use on a phone. Worse, the public records it published were often months out of date by the time they reached the public. That delay served the bureaucrats who’d rather keep taxpayers in the dark. It didn’t serve anyone else.
What’s New
Transparent California just relaunched with a complete redesign, and the improvements go far beyond a new coat of paint.
The new site is ad free, for now, thanks to generous donors who believe taxpayers shouldn’t have to dig through banner ads and pop ups just to see how their money is spent. That means no clutter standing between users and the data. It’s also built for mobile, so anyone can search a government employee’s salary or an agency’s budget from their phone in seconds. And the records themselves now publish faster, cutting down the months long lag that used to separate a public record from the public.
The result is a search tool that actually works the way taxpayers need it to: quick, clean, and current.
Why It Matters
Government salary and pension data has always been public information. The problem was never access on paper, it was access in practice. Burying records in a slow, ad choked, outdated system is its own kind of opacity.
A faster, cleaner Transparent California means a reporter can find a story in minutes instead of hours. It means a parent, a small business owner, or a retiree checking on their local government doesn’t need special skills to find what they’re looking for. Good government starts with the public actually being able to see what government is doing, and this update closes a gap that had been open for years.
A Decade of Results, Backed by Nevadans and Californians
Transparent California isn’t new. For twelve years, its salary and pension data have been cited by major news outlets across California and the United States to expose government waste. That reporting has helped identify hundreds of millions of dollars in questionable spending, money that taxpayers have a right to know about.
The project has never taken a dollar of government funding. It’s funded entirely by people who believe the public has a right to see how public money is spent, which is exactly why it answers only to the truth, not to any agency it covers.
What’s Next
The redesigned platform isn’t just built for California. It’s built as a modular blueprint that can expand to other states, creating a wider network of public salary and spending data that taxpayers everywhere can use.
Take a look at the new Transparent California and see what ten million users already know: when government spending is easy to find, it’s a lot harder to hide.
Explore the new Transparent California website
Keep It Ad Free
The ad free experience only lasts as long as donors keep funding it. Every gift helps cover the cost of running the platform without selling space to advertisers, so the site stays focused entirely on public accountability, not corporate banners.
Transparent California depends on the generosity of individual donors to enable this collection. Anyone with a specific interest in a particular agency can sponsor collection of their data and support the effort to provide the public with this service.
Allen D. Payton contributed to this report.
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