Search by last name, agency or job title
More than 1,700 state employees made more than $100,000 in total pay in calendar year 2007, according to a Texas Watchdog review of state pay records from the state comptroller's office. The total figures cited below include each worker's base pay or salary, overtime pay, longevity pay, bonuses and all other types of compensation. However, the list does not include workers from the state's higher education institutions. Click here to see a couple more notes on this database.

A couple more notes on our database
If you can't find the person you're looking for, don't forget that many people go by their middle names, which may not always show up so well in the state's records. Two good examples: Britt Harris, the state's most well-paid employee, shows up in the records as "Thomas B. Harris." And you might not recognize an employee named "James R. Perry" except by his job title: Governor.

Many district judges (and some other state employees) showed up in the database with their "agency" of employment listed as the state comptroller's office. That's how the information came to us -- from the comptroller's office.

Also, several state employees who made more than $100,000 in total pay in 2007 had received promotions or other job-title changes during that year. In those cases, we opted to allow the database to identify that person at the highest-ranking job title they held during that year. (Example: If a person were promoted from "Manager I" to "Manager II," then the database should show that person as a Manager II.) In cases where it wasn't so obvious which job ranked higher, we allowed the database to identify that person by the job title that brought with it a bigger paycheck (as calculated on a monthly basis). In the couple of cases where a person changed jobs during the year and there was no change at all in their monthly pay, we wanted the database to identify the person with the last job classification they held in 2007.

UPDATE: Another helpful hint for those who are searching in the "agency" field -- some state agencies' names aren't so obvious. You won't find much searching by the word "prisons," for instance, because the agency that oversees the prisons calls itself the Department of Criminal Justice. You can find a helpful list of formal names for state agencies and departments at this link.





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