A few weeks ago three top officials from the small, low-income city of Bell, California made nationwide news. Unbeknownst to other officials in the state, and apparently the taxpayers of Bell, the city manager was making a yearly salary of $787,637, the police chief was making $457,000, and an assistant city manager was making $376,288. Anyone want to move to Bell?!

A Los Angeles Times follow-up to the story revealed that in 2009, social services were cut by 21 percent, public safety was cut by 3.7 percent, and police training was cut by a whopping 58 percent. You wonder why Bell couldn’t afford all those pesky services anymore?

The highest paid official in Bell could receive over $14 million in pension payments over the course of his retirement if he lives to be 75, a pension reform advocate told the Los Angeles Times…and this doesn’t include annual cost-of-living increases and the monthly Social Security payments he’ll also receive! According to the Times, Bell taxpayers will not be the only ones paying this tab down. San Gabriel, Imperial Beach, Norco and Yucca Valley are a few of the cities which are pooled into the same public service programs.

Dare I say, “We told you so.”

The Free Enterprise Nation (FEN) has been publishing these kinds of stories for nearly a year now. People may look at this story and say, “Well that’s California, and they’re a disaster over there. That would never happen in my town.”

Guess again.

FEN founder and author of the bestselling book UNSUSTAINABLE: How Big Government, Taxes and Debt are Wrecking America, Jim MacDougald writes, “With a total of 1.9 million federal workers, the difference in annual compensation was $114 BILLION a year, taken from the private sector businesses and their employees to pay federal workers.”

And that’s not all happening only in California. When browsing through FEN’s free research database under “Pay Disparity” a few other cites popped up:

• A superintendent in Buffalo makes $220,000 a year, in addition to over $66,000 in benefits
• 500 police officers in Suffolk, NY make over $150,000 a year, some as high as $200,000
• State workers in Washington make on average $20,000 more a year than their private sector counterparts

These examples may not seem as egregious as the taxpayer-funded abuses in Bell, but they should be of concern to their local residents nonetheless. Do you know the compensation packages of the public servants in your home town?

You may want to look into that sooner than later.