A Los Angeles County Superior Court judge has ordered the city of Burbank to release data on bonuses paid to individual employees, saying the taxpayers' right to know exceeded any workplace privacy concerns.
Superior Court Judge Ann I. Jones ruled Friday in a lawsuit filed by the Burbank Leader after city officials refused to make individual bonuses public.
Jones cited legal precedent, telling the parties that previous court rulings "basically said, 'Man up, public employees. You don't have any reasonable expectation of privacy in regards to your salary.' "
Emily Gabel-Luddy, a former Los Angeles city planning official who was recently elected to the Burbank City Council, called the decision predictable.
"I worked in local government for a long time, and my perspective comes from being a former city employee with the expectation that my salary was public because it was paid for by taxpayer dollars," she said. "The decision does not surprise me because taxpayers should be able to see where the dollars are spent."
Karlene W. Goller, an attorney for the Los Angeles Times, whose parent company also owns the Leader, and Karl Olson of the San Francisco-based law firm Ram & Olson, handled the lawsuit, which was filed in January.
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