[Editor's note:  This is the first of more than a dozen articles about county government payrolls in the more populous counties in the state.]

In 2010 Butler County had 495 county government workers who were paid over $15.5 million in total salaries.

With a 2010 census population of 65,880, an increase of 10.8% since 2000, government county salaries cost every person in Butler County about $236.

For the 36,799 residents ages 21 to 64 that’s $422 per resident.

The median county government salary was $33,644 with the middle half of workers earning between $16,408 and $42,730.

The county administrator was paid more than $100,000 but two other salaries were also high statistical outliers (see boxplots):

Table 1.  Top 3 salaries among Butler County government workers

Sixteen departments account for over 90 percent of salaries in Butler County.

Table 2.  Butler County Departments Accounting for 90 Percent  of Salaries

Eighteen position titles account for about half of the salaries:

Table 3.  Positions in Butler County Government Accounting for 50 Percent of Salaries

The table below is a list of salaries for the 495 Butler County workers (in alphabetical order):

Table 4.  Butler County 2010 Payroll (click below to view PDF)

Download file with Butler County 2010 payroll information in Excel or PDF format.  The Excel file can be filtered or sorted differently.

Butler County is the eighth largest county in Kansas with a 2010 census population between Riley County with 71,117 and Reno County with 64,511.

See Technical Analysis report for additional details.

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Computer Assisted Reporting Notes and Files

• Technical Analysis of Butler County Payroll 2010
• CSV statistics files (open in Excel):   By Department, By Position
• Boxplots of salaries:  (PDF)  All workers (p. 1), All Departments (pp. 2-29), Positions Shared Across Department (p. 30)
• Word cloud of position titles (PDF)
• R analysis script and input/output files (ZIP)

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Related

• Butler County, Kansas
• Butler County’s “Longevity Pay Plan”
• Butler County, Kansas at Sunshine Review: “C-” Grade for Sunshine (government transparency)
• Butler County, Kansas, Wikipedia
• Commission OKs increasing detention officer salaries, El Dorado Times, July 20, 2011.
• County discusses salaries of elected officials, El Dorado Times, Dec. 22, 2010.

• Kansas Watchdog County Resources (includes salaries from other counties)

• State Government Payroll Database, KansasOpenGov.org
• Government Employment & Payroll, U.S. Census Bureau
• New Kansas.com database: 2010 public salaries, Wichita Eagle, Nov. 23, 2010.
• KanView now provides salary information about state workers, Kansas Watchdog, Sept. 10, 2009.
• Public employees’ pay, Kansas City Star, March 31, 2008.
• Salaries for State Agencies, Lawrence Journal World, 2005.

• State public employee salary resources, Sunshine Review

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Contact: Earl F Glynn, earl@kansaswatchdog.org, KansasWatchdog.org

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