California public employees make way too much money both when they are working and when they retire

Meet The 5,355 California State Workers Who Earn More Than $200,000

Although California is slashing services again this year to fill a huge deficit, many state workers manage to take home massive paychecks.

Search for public employee salaries at the Sacramento Bee website

L.A. pensions may consume a third of city's general fund by 2015

City administrative officer reports that benefits for retired police, firefighters, DWP workers and other city employees could grow by $800 million in the next five years.

Former Chief of Police Bernard Parks, Others Part of $100,000 Pension Club

State's stem cell agency seeks more time, money

But California's stem cell agency quickly found itself mired in another form of politics: legislators and government watchdogs criticized the program for paying its president more than twice the governor's salary, distributing nearly $1 billion to universities with representatives on its board of directors and overselling the promise of stem cell cures.

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Another sore point has been the high salaries paid to top administrators, who handle a staff of about 50. In 2009, President Alan Trounson, a renowned stem cell scientist from Australia, was paid $490,000, the second highest salary in state government outside the university system, records show.

By comparison, the governor's salary, which Arnold Schwarzenegger declines, is $173,987, and the governor is responsible for oversight of more than 200,000 state employees.

In the research realm, Francis S. Collins, director of the federal government's National Institutes of Health which employs more than 17,000 people and invests $32.5 billion in medical research each year, makes $199,700, said spokesman Don Ralbovsky. Collins is one of the nation's best knowngenetics researchers.