Reply #39: ALEC was behind the phony GOP numbers about RI's public employees being the 4th highest paid in US [View All]

"Last year it was discovered that Rhode Island's public employees ranked 4th in average pay, while the private sector ranked 23rd," he said in his posting on a local news website.

We found those statistics interesting. When we e-mailed him asking for their source, he said he found them in a 2009 report -- "Rich States, Poor States," by the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council. That ALEC report says the information came from the Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council, a business-financed research group, but it doesn't indicate which RIPEC report it's referencing or when the data were collected.

We went looking for the RIPEC report that had those numbers. We couldn't find it.

Neither could RIPEC, which searched reports going back to the mid-1990s.