The 10 highest-paid state employees in Colorado all make over $900K a year

DENVER (KDVR) — All 10 of the highest-paid state employees in Colorado made more than $900,000, according to data obtained by FOX31. All 10 are also employees of only two of the state’s many universities.

FOX31 obtained the data from several different state institutions to create the list of the top-paid employees and conduct an analysis. The data provided did not include any information on further compensation that an employee might receive in a year like bonuses or other incentives.

10 highest-paid Denver employees in 2023

The following are the 10 highest-paid state employees. All 10 were employed by either the University of Colorado system or the Colorado State University system.

FOX31 has removed the full first and last names from the list:

Notable names

Two of the top 10 are both listed as being in “senior management” in athletics at CSU. These two people are identified in the database only as “M. Norvell,” who makes $1.7 million and “N. Medved” who makes $1.1 million.

While these may be different people, Jay Norvell is the head football coach at CSU. His full name is Merritt James Norvell, and he goes by Jay. Niko Medved is the head men’s basketball coach at CSU.

CU head football coach Deion Sanders is included in the database, but his base salary is not what you may expect.

How did Denver get its name?

It is reported that Sanders made $500,000 in 2023. This does not include any other forms of compensation by the university as part of a contract.

Back in December 2022, it was reported to FOX31 that CU Boulder had offered Sanders more than $5 million per year to be the head coach. If this was the case in the final contract, that amount could be primarily paid through other compensation forms.

Gov. Jared Polis reportedly received $90,000 in 2023. According to the data, there are over 9,700 employees in the University of Colorado system alone that have higher salaries than this. This differs from the governor’s expected salary of $134,632, which is based on 66% of the Colorado Supreme Court chief justice’s salary.

The system and how it works

FOX31 was not able to obtain a single database with all the state employees in the state and had to compile the list based on a few different databases. This is because of how the system works.

There are essentially two different groups of employees in the state: classified and exempt. Classified employees are paid through the state personnel system and are governed by the state personnel board. This group includes people like Polis and other state officials.

The other group is, as the name would suggest, exempt from this system. This includes a majority of staff and faculty at the state’s many universities. These exempt employees are part of their university’s respective payroll system. This group includes people like Sanders.

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The pay rate of classified state employees is much lower than for those in the university systems, according to the data.

For example, the highest-paid classified state employee made $315,000 in 2023. In the CU system alone, this would not even be in the top 500 list of highest-paid employees.

Additionally, while 6,200 employees in the classified system made over $100,000, that only accounted for around 15% of all employees. Compare this to the CU system, where 8,200 of the approximately 29,000 employees made this amount, which is around 28%.

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