BobS
It is pretty widely agreed that government employees are better compensated than their private counterparts. Let’s remember that “compensation” includes not just pay, but fringe benefits, retirement benefits, job security & stability (sometimes including tenure), and even difficulty of the job itself.
One source of this imbalance is that private, profit-seeking companies engage in a natural and healthy competition with their unions, or individual hires, while the public employers (city councils, state legislatures, school boards, etc.) do not. The end result is that the public employee unions run roughshod over their counterparts. They are highly mobilized, vocal, and each employee has a lot at stake. The taxpayers each have very little at stake, are less organized, and are often duped by the media and the PR abilities of groups like the public safety unions.
Groups like the Taxpayers Association can try to speak up, but it is an uphill battle. So far they are losing.