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

DENVER (BNN)-- All 10 of the highest-paid state staff members in Colorado made more than $900,000, according to data acquired by FOX31. All 10 are also staff members of just 2 of the state's lots of universities.

FOX31 obtained the data from a number of various state organizations to produce the list of the top-paid staff members and conduct an analysis. The information offered did not consist of any information on additional compensation that a staff member may receive in a year like benefits 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 complete first and last names from the list:

RankPosition/DepartmentSalarySchool1Senior Management, Athletics$ 1,700,000 CSU2Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 1,347,499 CU Anschutz3Dean of the School of Medicine$ 1,130,186 CU Anschutz4Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 1,117,983 CU Anschutz5Senior Management, Athletics$ 1,100,000 CSU6Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 1,084,324 CU Anschutz7Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 1,010,000 CU Anschutz8Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 994,999 CU Anschutz9Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 952,097 CU Anschutz10Professor, School of Medicine Department of Orthopedics$ 945,990 CU AnschutzSource: University of Colorado System and Colorado State University

Significant names

Two of the leading 10 are both noted as being in "senior management" in athletics at CSU. These 2 people are identified in the database just as "M. Norvell," who makes $1.7 million and "N. Medved" who makes $1.1 million.

While these may be various people, Jay Norvell is the head football coach at CSU. His complete 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 consisted of in the database, however his base pay is not what you might expect.

How did Denver get its name?

It is reported that Sanders made $500,000 in 2023. This does not consist of any other types of settlement 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 each year to be the head coach. If this held true in the final agreement, that quantity could be mostly paid through other compensation forms.

Gov. Jared Polis apparently got $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 varies from the guv's expected income 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 get a single database with all the state staff members in the state and needed to compile the list based on a few different databases. Because of how the system works, this is.

There are essentially 2 different groups of employees in the state: categorized and exempt. Categorized staff members are paid through the state workers system and are governed by the state workers board. This group consists of people like Polis and other state authorities.

The other group is, as the name would recommend, exempt from this system. This includes a bulk of staff and professors at the state's many universities. These exempt employees are part of their university's respective payroll system. This group consists of individuals like Sanders.

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

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

Additionally, while 6,200 staff members in the classified system made over $100,000, that just represented around 15% of all staff members. Compare this to the CU system, where 8,200 of the approximately 29,000 staff members made this quantity, which is around 28%.