You might have seen our story last week on how some 1,700-plus state workers made $100,000 or more in 2007. We paired with it a database of those workers' names and total pay amounts.

I couldn't help but notice that the state comptroller's office's "Where the Money Goes" Web site -- which shows you, for instance, that the state House of Representatives paid $4.98 to Ace Mart Restaurant Supply Co. on April 2 of this year -- does not show how much state workers make.

I wondered why that was. So I asked Allen Spelce of the comptroller's office (note: the comptroller's office helped me with the state worker pay records database after I asked for it under the state public records law).

Here's his e-mailed note to me about that.

The legislation that put into place Where the Money Goes was HB 3430. That bill requires us to post expenditures and link them to the warrant or check register level. In the case of state employees’ salaries, this would require us to post net salary amounts of employees. The AG in the past had determined that employees’ net salary amounts were confidential while gross salary amounts were public. Also, the House authors of the bill stated that it was never their intention that individual state employees’ net salaries be posted as a result of HB 3430. We also asked the AG for a ruling regarding whether net salary amounts were public, and again the AG ruled that net salaries are confidential because the net amounts reveal personal financial decisions of employees. Based on the AG ruling, the language of the bill, and the statement of intent by the House authors, Where the Money Goes contains the amount of employee salaries expended by each agency, but not net individuals’ salary amounts linked to individuals’ names.

You can hear more about the Where the Money Goes Web site and the philosophy behind it in an mp3 interview posted just the other day that State Comptroller Susan Combs did with David Guenthner of the free-market Texas Public Policy Foundation.

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