Question of the day: In 40+ states, the highest-paid state employee is one that holds what job? See if you can guess it after each hint.
Hint I: In 48 states, a person holding this job earns more than the governor (not including cases where the governor forgoes pay), with a rate ranging from 108.5% of the governor’s salary to 3451% of the governor’s salary.
Hint II: The position does not exist in the other two states.
Hint III: Which are Alaska and Vermont
Hint IV: In addition to making more than the governor, he makes more than the person he reports to and the person that the person he reports to reports to.
Hint V: Much of the money that he makes usually is usually given to him by people outside the official hierarchy under which he works.
Hint VI: Most of the people that report to him don’t actively get paid anything.
Hint VII: People get in trouble all of the time when Hint V Hint VI turns out not to be true when it is supposed to be true.
How many hints, if any, did it take you?
Additional Info:
Source of the above chart.
Article on gubernatorial salaries
Division I-A Coaching Salaries
More…
Hint IV.
Comment by Webmaster — October 24, 2008 @ 4:46 am
I don’t get hints V and VII.
Comment by Brandon Berg — October 24, 2008 @ 8:36 pm
Would it help if I said that VII was supposed to say “when VI isn’t true”?
V - If not, coaches receive portion of they pay from third parties as opposed to the university that they presumably work for. For instance, as part of their contract, they are promised the ability to make money by hosting a radio show, fielding a summer training camp for young people, or money for product endorsements.
VII - Coaches get in a lot of trouble when anyone pays their players anything. The players are usually given a scholarship, but they can’t be paid unless they can clearly demonstrating that they’re working for it. For instance, a coach (and indeed the entire program) got in trouble when the quarterback got a job that he never showed up for at a local car dealership owned by a program booster.
Comment by trumwill — October 24, 2008 @ 9:01 pm
Yes, both V and VII both make much more sense now that you’ve clarified that they’re not related.
Comment by Brandon Berg — October 25, 2008 @ 12:38 am
Well, it didn’t help that I saw the great big giant photo of the LSU and Florida coaches at the same time as the list. I knew right off what you were talking about
Comment by Barry — October 27, 2008 @ 8:07 am
That’s weird, Barry. The image is supposed to be “below the fold” (and comes up that way for me). What browser are you using? Did you see one image or both on the main page? Or did you open up the page straight-away?
Comment by trumwill — October 27, 2008 @ 8:40 am
I have the feed in my RSS reader (Bloglines), then usually click on the main link to open them in the browser. There’s no “fold” in the Feed Reader or in the main article. I use Firefox 3.
Comment by Barry — October 27, 2008 @ 11:10 am