S.F.’s top-paid employee made $840K. Here’s what every city worker gets paid

The most well-compensated San Francisco government employee isn’t Mayor London Breed, District Attorney Brooke Jenkins or Police Chief Bill Scott. It’s actually Alison Romano, the chief executive and investment officer in the retirement services department. From July 2023 to June 2024, Romano earned $842,000 in total compensation for overseeing the investment and management of the city’s pension funds.

But close behind Romano’s $842,000 compensation is police Sgt. Frank Harrell and his $765,000 compensation — the third-highest among San Francisco government workers. The key to Harrell’s unusually large compensation is the nearly $450,000 of overtime pay — a sum that is more than double his regular salary.

Among the city’s top-paid government workers are many other public safety employees who earned substantially more money last year by working hundreds of overtime hours. Of the top 580 earners — who make up about 2.5% of full-time workers — 417 (or 72%) were in the police, sheriff’s or fire departments. Each made more than $400,000, rivaling the compensations of physician administrators, investment managers and top elected officials.

That’s according to an analysis of compensation data of every San Francisco government employee from the Controller’s Office for the 2023-24 fiscal year. The Chronicle looked at the wages and benefit packages of employees who worked at least 2,080 hours from July 2023 to June 2024 — equivalent to a full-time position working 40 hours per week.

The data shows Mayor London Breed made $469,000 last year, making her the top-paid mayor in California. Her compensation includes about $373,000 in regular pay, $57,000 in contributions to her retirement plan, $22,000 in health and dental benefits, and $17,000 in other benefits such as unemployment insurance and Social Security.

Almost 200 people received more in compensation than Breed last year, many of whom were public safety employees earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in overtime pay.

The most-compensated deputy sheriff, for instance, earned close to $400,000 in overtime pay last year. That’s almost as much as Breed’s total compensation.

While the amount of overtime pay for this deputy sheriff may be an extreme case, the prevalence of overtime work is widespread. All but one deputy sheriff in our dataset received some amount of overtime pay, with the median deputy sheriff’s overtime pay constituting about a third of their total compensation last year. Across the entire department, 95% of full-time employees received some amount of overtime pay last year.

It’s a similar case for other first responders in public safety agencies that rely on overtime work to fill assignment gaps as a result of staff vacancies.

At the city’s police department, overtime paid to officers skyrocketed in the past three years as staffing declined. The median overtime paid to police officers more than doubled from $32,500 in June 2022 to $67,200 in June 2024.

Among the city’s top officials, Police Chief Bill Scott had the highest compensation last year at $547,000, followed by Fire Chief Jeanine Nicholson ($544,000) and Sheriff Paul Miyamoto ($532,000).

Members of the Board of Supervisors are among the least compensated elected officials, with a salary of $163,000 and an average benefits package of about $64,000.

While salaries and overtime pay generally constitute the largest differences in worker compensation, substantial retirement contributions for some employees in the county sheriff’s office have significantly boosted their overall compensations.

Sheriff Miyamoto, for instance, had the largest retirement contributions among all S.F. employees workers last year ($180,000), which puts his total compensation above that of Mayor Breed, despite earning $50,000 less in regular pay.

Across all full-time employees, 95 received retirement contributions of $100,000 or more last year. Among them, 88 were in the sheriff’s department.

However, the median retirement contribution among sheriff’s department employees — around $24,000 — is similar to that of other agencies, indicating those select employees who received more than $100,000 in retirement benefits are outliers.