Labor aristocrats on the public payroll

Average pay per employee topped $69,100 (including salary, overtime and other pay differentials), while average fringe-benefit costs were about $37,600. More than half the cost of fringe benefits, about $20,000, was for pension contributions, and more than $8,000 was for health insurance.

And in the last eight years, the city's average employee compensation cost grew by nearly two-thirds. Since fiscal year 2000, salaries have grown at an average rate of 3.6 percent a year, compared to an inflation rate in the metro region of 3.2 percent.

But the real problem is the fringe benefits - whose growth is astonishing. In eight years, the city's average contribution for pension benefits grew 704 percent - from $2,530 per full-time employee to $20,333. Health-insurance costs doubled while other nonpension fringe-benefit costs rose almost 50 percent.