The most popular articles in our local Bergen Record discuss the average salaries of teachers and cops in our area.

While most teachers in New Jersey earn between $40,000 and $60,000, 1.6 percent of the state's 116,000 public school teachers make over $100,000. That's 1,847 teachers and most of them are in Northern New Jersey. The median salary for high school teachers in our town is $80,111.

Other public employees are also doing very well.

Eighty-eight percent of the 563 Bergen County workers who earned
more than $100,000 in 2009 worked in law enforcement — as assistant
prosecutors, county investigators, county police officers or jail
guards. About 44 percent of Bergen County Sheriff's Office employees
took home more than $100,000 in salary and overtime in 2009.

Daniel
Marro, a Bergen County corrections officer, made more than $190,000 in
2009 – about $78,000 of that came from overtime pay. Stephen Malone, a
county police sergeant, made $180,000, including about $76,000 in
overtime.

Public employee salaries is a favorite topic of local newspapers (see this one on cops in Rockland County, NY). The reporters who write these stories make around $30,000 or $40,000, so imagine them typing out these stories with white knuckles on the keyboard.

I'm going to another town meeting tonight about the budget crisis. This is guaranteed to be a hot topic tonight.

(Sorry for all the Jersey-centric blog posts lately. I suppose I could write about a juicy national sex scandal later.)