Top 5 Salaries In Palm Desert: RivCo's Highest Paid Officials 2022

PALM DESERT, CA —The top 10 earners in Riverside County Government for 2022 worked in mental health, social services and the public safety sector, according to the California State Controller's Office's annual report released Tuesday.

A total of 28,197 Riverside County employees earned $1,863,044,038 in salary in 2022, spending an additional $358,933,756 in retirement and health contributions, according to the report that line items on how taxpayer funds were paid for the public payroll.

Palm Desert divided its total wages of $12,482,052 among the 142 employees, with $3,903,324 paid toward retirement and health contributions in 2022. Banning's worker earnings ranked 226 out of 459 California cities whose wages were disclosed in the report.

The top 5 Palm Desert wage earners for 2022 were:

1. City Manager: $288,991
2. Director of Finance/City Treasurer: $229,681
3. Deputy Director of Finance: $209,524
4. Chief Innovation and Procurement Officer: $206,222
5. Director of Public Works: $201,765

The data is available at www.publicpay.ca.gov.

Riverside County's Highest Wage Earners Include Behavioral Health/Psychiatric Care Workers

The data available at www.publicpay.ca.gov shows that the highest-paid employee in the county was the Behavioral Health Director/Medical Director, who earned a total composite salary of $566,374 in 2022.

No names were shared on the portal.

The second highest-paid county official was the Chief Deputy Director of Sheriff's Administration, who earned a composite salary of $530,955, followed by the Associate Chief Medical Officer, whose salary equaled $507,748 for 2022.

Sheriff Chad Bianco, by comparison, earned $298,990, according to the report, just under $4,000 more than the year before.

In government-speak, when a subordinate makes more than the superior, it's called "compaction." The Board of Supervisors in 2014 hiked executive salaries to fix disparities.

The top 10 earners in the county included Staff Psychiatrists, the Chief of Psychiatry, and the Riverside University Health System's Medical Center Executive Officer, all earning between $506,624 and $444,831 in total composite wages.

As was the case in 2021, Board members were way down the list for annual compensation packages in 2022, making less than many deputy public defenders, senior RUHS nurses, and even a laboratory researcher, figures showed.

The supervisors' pay ranged from $160,644 to $203,252 in 2022. Supervisor Kevin Jeffries remains at the bottom of supervisor pay—below the Clerk of the Board, who earned $179,835—due to consistently declining pay raises since first taking office in 2013. Jeffries is the board's most senior member and announced that he will retire from politics after his current term in 2024.

The controller's website indicated the average pay for a county employee last year reduced slightly to $66,072 over 2021's average salary of $66,579.