First responders account for two-thirds of the City of Ottawa's sunshine list, which discloses employees who earned more than $100,000 last year.
In 2009, 735 municipal workers made more than $100,000. Ottawa police account for 405 of those employees, 285 firefighters are on the list and 49 are paramedics.
City manager Kent Kirkpatrick tops the list with a salary of $311,133.23, and $7,706.69 in taxable benefits. Vern White, the city's chief of police, earned $250,205.59, with $3,430.69 in taxable benefits.
Auditor general Alain Lalonde earned $179,002.55. He was also paid more than $100,000 in taxable benefits to top up his pension.
OC Transpo general manager Alain Mercier earned $189,969.87 last year, recording $7,452.43 in taxable benefits.
Meanwhile, Mayor Larry O'Brien earned $128,460.71 in 2009.
The city is required by law to disclose public sector salaries that surpass $100,000.
About half of the employees on the list earn a base salary of less than $100,000 per year, including 44 paramedics and 130 firefighters. Their salaries were pushed above the $100,000-mark because of overtime, retroactive pay, vacation pay outs, on-call pay and merit pay.
In 2008, there were 989 city employees who earned more than $100,000.
Many of those employees were firefighters who received retroactive pay after an arbitrator settled a contract dispute, awarding firefighters salary increases retroactive to 2004. At the time, firefighters had been working without a pay raise for four years.
