For the last several years, the vast majority of California school districts have ignored a seemingly simple request from the state controller: to send in their payroll information, so the controller can include education salaries in a large public database that shows how much employees are paid in state and local governments.
Other local agencies — including cities, counties and special districts — have been required to send their payroll information to the state controller’s office annually for more than a decade. The requirement grew out of the 2010 Bell scandal, in which seven public officials were convicted of corruption after The Times reported the town was paying its city manager nearly $800,000 a year.
But this basic act of transparency has been optional for K-12 school districts, and about three-quarters of them just don’t do it.
