Posting salaries of Illinois state workers on Web meets resistance on Government Unions

The State-Journal Register reports:

State Rep. Michael Tryon, R-Crystal Lake, wants state government to create a Web site with a searchable database containing information about contracts, expenditures and employee salaries. He described it as “a portal that would provide transparency to all state operations.”

Listing the individual salaries of employees would deter favoritism in granting pay raises, he said. Making the salary information easily available also would deter “ghost pay rolling,” a term describing no-show jobs for which the purported employees draw pay, Tryon said.

“There just aren’t any secrets in government,” Tryon said. “We shouldn’t have obstacles to obtaining information, especially when we have the ability to put this information on the Internet and people can access this information from their desktops.”

Tryon’s idea is unpopular among state employees, said a lobbyist with the largest state workers’ union.

There is no “good public policy reason” to release the individual salaries of rank-and-file state employees, said Joanna Webb-Gauvin, legislative director for Council 31 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. AFSCME members feel “sort of like their laundry’s being aired,” Webb-Gauvin told the legislative committee.

AFSCME is a little shy about their rent seeking successes while Illinois is on the verge of insolvency.