The Texas Tribune's salary application contains payroll information on 550,000 government workers at 62 agencies, schools, cities, counties and transit operations.
Included are the following entities: State of Texas, Houston ISD, Houston, Harris County, Dallas ISD, Dallas, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Northside ISD, Cypress-Fairbanks ISD, San Antonio, North East ISD, El Paso ISD, Texas A&M University, Aldine ISD, Arlington ISD, Katy ISD, San Antonio ISD, Pasadena ISD, Dallas County, Fort Bend ISD, Lewisville ISD, El Paso, Fort Worth, Garland ISD, Round Rock ISD, Bexar County, Plano ISD, Travis County, Tarrant County, Metropolitan Transit Authority (Houston), Dallas Area Rapid Transit, Corpus Christi, Arlington, Plano, Amarillo, Irving, VIA Metro (San Antonio), Lubbock, Garland, Brownsville, University of Texas System, Galveston, Highland Park ISD, Sun Metro (El Paso), Texas A&M System, and Capital Metro (Austin).
The database was updated in early May, and the following agencies were added: Texas Tech University, University of Houston, University of North Texas, University of Texas at Arlington, The University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas State University, Austin ISD, Eanes ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Spring Branch ISD, Texas Tech University System, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, University of North Texas System, University of North Texas Health Science Center and StarTran, where Capital Metro (Austin) bus drivers are employed.
The data only include a snapshot of each workers' annual base salary, and not overtime, incentive pay or other compensation. The data are collected by the Tribune staff under the Texas Public Information Act, and updated periodically. (The data for state of Texas executive branch agencies is current as of April 15.)
A typical request for salary data looks like this:
Dear open-records administrator:
Under the Texas Public Information Act, I'd like to request an electronic listing of all [ENTER AGENCY NAME HERE] employees.
Specifically, I'm seeking a spreadsheet, database or delimited text file(s) — not paper records or a PDF created from data — with the following fields for each employee: Name, title, [ENTER DEPARTMENT OR AGENCY OR SCHOOL], race, gender, hire date and annual salary. (If you can't produce all these fields, please let us know).
In addition, please include any lookup tables that may be needed to interpret the data. For example, if departments are listed with codes linked to a separate table, we'll be happy to join the records ourselves, rather than require your staff to do so.
I want to stress that I'm not seeking any records that are prohibited from release either by statute or previous rulings by the Texas Attorney General or the courts. Please let me know if you feel any records in the fields I've requested are confidential, and I'll consider amending my request.
Also, please let me know if clarifying the request might speed the release of the data, reduce any programming time and, most important, avoid a referral to the Attorney General.
We're comfortable working with large data sets and can receive the records in a variety of formats (.dbf, .csv, .mdb, etc) and media (CD, DVD, ftp).
I seek this information in the public interest as a journalist, and not for a commercial purpose. Therefore, I'm requesting that you waive any fees, as allowed under the Act.
Thank you again for your time. Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards,
