The public payroll information for my state is available through the website http://seethroughny.net/. For 2010 there were over 116,000 public employees who made $100k.
A lot of those 116,000 public employees will be managers, or skilled professionals (engineers? doctors? no idea). A public service manager working a 60 hour week would probably make a similar amount in the private sector, and no, they don't have easier jobs. Their jobs are often kind of meaningless (dealing with lots of politics and bureaucracy), but that doesn't make them easy.
If it's anything like Australia, it's low-level public servants who have the best pay. They typically have very little responsibility, great conditions (public execs have unlimited work hours, but non-execs have fixed hours) and no-one competes for their job because it's hard to get your foot in the door.
OK, looking at the data, there's a lot of "stationary engineers" and "sewage treatment workers" on high pay points. No idea why. Maybe they have a very strong union, or it could be a data error. Or maybe it includes some kind of payout, after a bunch of "stationary engineers" were injured?
In the suburban county where I live 94% of police officers made more than $100k in 2010. The average police officer made $132k. There were 2,499 officers.
You will probably not be surprised to learn that your community is atypical, to say the least. The national average is more like $50K, and there are many places where the officers are paid way below the average.
The base salary for a police officer in this area with five years experience is $108,000. That does not include additional benefit costs such as pension (after 20 years) and complete health care coverage. Throw in higher ranking officers and overtime and you get the figure mentioned previously.
I'm not sure what your point is. Would it bother you less if they were all contractors? You live in New York, the 3rd most populous state in the country, so it follows that you would have a lot of civil servants compared to say, Alaska. Nothing in your statement provides any evidence that civil service salaries are rising beyond inflation.
