Pa. State Officials Making $200,000

No pay raise in 2010? No problem for more than 26 Pennsylvania state officials who make more than $200,000 a year – before benefits.

Slideshow: Pa. State Workers Making More Than $200K

MyFoxPhilly looked at two reports to see how much top state officials make – mostly in salary.

That could explain why a lot of high-profile state officials like Gov. Ed Rendell, lawmakers and judges aren’t really complaining about giving up a raise in 2010.

One report is a publicly available database on the Web site archive.org that shows state payroll figures for 2008.

Report: http://www.archive.org/details/CommonwealthOfPennsylvaniaPayrollDatabase2008

The other study is from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in March that added data for PHEAA and some quasi-state organizations to the list.

Article: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09088/958830-85.stm

Based on those two reports, at least 26 state workers made more than $200,000 in the past year.

In total, 96 workers made more than Gov. Ed Rendell, who gets paid $174,435 a year in salary.

The highest-paid officials were from PHEAA, or Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency.

PHEAA had five employees making at least $200,000, with PHEAA chairman James Preston pulling in $320,000.

The Pennsylvania School Employees' Retirement System had four employees in the $200,000 list, topped by chief investment director Alan Van Noord, who made $251,542.

Another high-paying job is being the president of a state-run university. There were 10 presidents from school like Slippery Rock, Clarion and the Community College of Philadelphia who made the list.

(Note: schools like Penn State and Temple received limited state funds and aren’t considered as state-run schools. Graham Spanier, Penn State’s leader, made $545,016 last year.)

Other interesting high-earners are William E. Buchanan, a library services professor at Clarion, who gets $203,621 a year, and fellow Clarion professor James W. Blake, who gets $209,841.

In fact, there are 10 professors at state universities who make more than Rendell, as well as dozens of judges.