Watchdog Group: Hefty Public Salaries Cost California Taxpayers $35 Billion

Feeling all warm and fuzzy after a festive weekend with the family? Well, it’s time to crush that holiday spirit. Forbes has a vein-popping report from OpenTheBooks.com on some of the exorbitant salaries being raked in by hundreds of thousands of California’s public employees.

The watchdog group sifted through the numbers and found 218,667 workers earning over $100,000 per year at a cost of $35 billion to taxpayers. The biggest culprits were the City and County of Los Angeles; the City of San Francisco; California Highway Patrol; Riverside County; Orange County; Sacramento County; San Jose; San Diego County; and LAUSD.

You can read the entire report here. There's also an interactive map to help satisfy your compensation curiosities by zip code.

Data and lists compiled by OpenTheBooks.com.