Group Pushes For Release Of OSU Salaries

By Denise Yost
Managing Editor, nbc4i.com
Published: January 5, 2009

COLUMBUS, Ohio—How many Ohio State University employees make more than $250,000 a year?

It’s a question one local advocacy group said should be easy to answer as it pushes for greater transparency in how the university spends taxpayer dollars, NBC 4‘s Patrick Preston reported.

“Under tough times, everybody is looking pretty hard at their checkbook and we think the public ought to see the public checkbook,“ said Buckeye Institute President David Hansen.

The Buckeye Institute has put salary data online for the 154 OSU employees earning more than $250,000 a year.

Of the 154 employees, 111 are medical staff, 24 are administrators, 13 are professors and six hail from sports programs.

OSU President E. Gordon Gee tops the list at $775,000, but the data does not include additional compensation packages.

“The issue isn’t whether these salaries are reasonable or unreasonable. The issue is whether the public have access to them to make their own judgment about whether they’re reasonable or unreasonable,“ Hansen said.

As it stands, OSU salary data is provided to media outlets on request and the university’s office of legal affairs will help anybody make a public records request. You can also find salary data on your own by going to the university’s library and asking for the data in book form in the reserves section.

But the public has yet to be able to see OSU salary data online. A school representative said they didn’t know why that was the case.

Hansen said the salaries are just the start of the Buckeye Institute’s plans, which include publishing online salary databases for all state government workers as well as public school employees.

“Look at how government was so quick to look up information on Joe The Plumber. It really should be the other way around,“ Hansen said.

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