In 2010 Cowley County had 155 government workers who were paid about $5.3 million in total compensation.

With a 2010 census population of 36,311, a small increase of 0.1 percent since 2000, county worker salaries cost every person about $145.

For the 19,806 residents ages 21 to 64 that’s $265 per working-age resident.

The median annual earnings for a Cowley County worker was $32,719 with the middle half of workers earning between $28,138 and $40,622.

Only County Administrator Leroy Alsup earned more than $100,000.  He was only about $100 above that line.

Seventeen employees worked more than 200 hours of overtime, with one working 2,760 hours — almost 700 hours of overtime.  The average wage rate for these employees was slightly more than $15/hour, with overtime pay on average about $23/hour.

The two departments with the highest portion of the county employee compensation were Road & Bridget (19.9 percent ) and Sheriff (17.4 percent).  The table below shows values for all departments:

Table 1. Summary of Cowley County employee compensation by department

The top 13 of the 79 position titles account for half the salaries.

Table 2. Position titles in Cowley County accounting for 50 percent of employee compensation

The table below gives 2010 payroll information for the 155 Cowley County employees (in alphabetical order):

Table 3. Cowley County 2010 Payroll (click below to view PDF)

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

Cowley County is the 13th largest county in Kansas with a 2010 census population between Finney County with 36,776 and Montgomery County with 35,471.

See Technical Analysis report for additional details.

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Computer Assisted Reporting Notes and Files

• Technical Analysis of Cowley County Payroll 2010 (PDF)
• County-wide payroll summary:  Boxplot (PDF)

• Payroll summary by department:  Statistics (CSV), Boxplots (PDF)
• Payroll summary by position titles:  Statistics (CSV), Boxplots (PDF)

• Word clouds of position titles and department names (PDF)
• R analysis script and input/output files (ZIP)

Statistics summary files show number of employees, salary lower and upper bounds (min and max if there are no outliers), quartiles (Q1, Q2 — the median,  and Q3).  Sum, mean and percent of total figures are also shown. See p. 3 of Technical Analysis report for information about boxplots.

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Related

• Cowley County, Kansas
• Cowley County, Kansas at Sunshine Review: “C-” Grade for Sunshine (government transparency)
• Cowley County, Kansas, Wikipedia

• 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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