Our View: Salaries should be published

Comments made by representatives of Castle Rock Hospital District have us concerned about their willingness to share and publish their salaries.

Speaking to the Sweetwater County Commissioners last week, board members expressed reluctance to publicize their ambulance workers’ salaries, fearing that information would lead to Sweetwater Medics poaching their workers with the promise of a higher wage. We don’t believe that fear warrants the hospital district request to not publish those salaries and thankfully the commissioners agree with us.

City councils, county governments, and a large array of organizations are legally required to publish the positions within their organization and the salary the person occupying that position earns. As residents, we have a right to know where the money we paid in taxes ends up, and that’s where those salary publications come in handy. We can see how much a city department head or a deputy county attorney earns over the course of a year. It gives people a sense of where and how their money is spent and can be beneficial for someone deciding the benefits of working in either the public or private sectors. That information can be useful in other areas as well.

A recent example residents can look at is the city’s publication of salaries, which is available in our July 12 issue. We used that information to show Jacob Anglesey, who had been in jail since his arrest for first-degree murder in early 2016, was still receiving a salary from the city prior to his voluntary manslaughter plea earlier this month.

For Castle Rock Hospital District, publishing the salaries of its ambulance employees shouldn’t be questioned.

Residents within the hospital district pay tax money spent to support the district’s services and should have a window into seeing where those funds are spent. We realize their concern is with losing ambulance workers to Sweetwater Medics, the private ambulance service in Rock Springs, but that’s simply the cost of doing public business in Sweetwater County.

The public sector cannot compete with what is offered by private firms, which can admittedly cause problems for local governments seeking or retaining employees. However, the fear of losing employees should not supersede the public’s right to know where their tax dollars are spent. The hospital district can always hire and train more ambulance workers as needed.

Hopefully, the hospital district’s board will reveal those salaries, otherwise they’re doing a disservice to the tax-paying residents of their district.