The highest-paid state employee in California last year

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-prison-doctor-20110713,0,5931598.story

Prison doctor gets paid for doing little or nothing
A California surgeon has mostly been locked out of his job: on paid leave, fired or fighting his termination. When he does work, it's reviewing records. He made $777,000 last year, including back pay.
By Jack Dolan, Los Angeles Times

The highest-paid state employee in California last year, a prison surgeon who took home $777,423, has a history of mental illness, was fired once for alleged incompetence and has not been allowed to treat an inmate for six years because medical supervisors don't trust his clinical skills.

Since July 2005, Dr. Jeffrey Rohlfing has mostly been locked out of his job — on paid leave or fired or fighting his termination — at High Desert State Prison in Susanville, state records show. When he has been allowed inside the facility, he has been relegated to reviewing paper medical histories, what prison doctors call "mailroom" duty.

Rohlfing's $235,740 base pay, typical in California's corrections system, accounted for about a third of his income last year. The rest of the money was back pay for more than two years when he did no work for the state while appealing his termination. A supervisor had determined that Rohlfing provided substandard care for two patients, according to state Personnel Board records.

Rohlfing won that case before the board and was rehired and assigned to "mailroom" work in late 2009.

donations. Is that inaccurate?

As for this specific example, USC is a private institution.

and his wife took a bat to his legs. then claimed he was attacked by mexicans... he is now "retired" instead of being charged.

He'd be perfectly happy there.

Was his base salary of $235,740 higher than the base salary of other similar doctors? Probably lower if anything, I would guess.

There is too little information in the OP to form any reaction.

Working as a prison doctor may be the absolute pits.

I don't know how much other California surgeons earn, but this may not be an enormous amount for the salary.

I don't subscribe to the LA Times because of their nasty attitude toward working people. They beat teachers up just like they are beating this guy up.

Working with prisoners is not easy whether you are a doctor, a guard or a teacher. That's no excuse, but it may explain why the best doctors in the state did not rush to replace this man.

Notice that they are now starting to do to doctors exactly what they did to teachers. Pick a few examples of "shocking, oh how shocking" stories of unusual doctors with unusual problems and paint the doctor as a villain. The next move will be to print a few similar stories about horrid doctors. People get frightened and angry. Then they take some sort of test results or something.

Guys, we have been here before. When are we going to learn?

I unrecc'ed this. Of all people to pick on, a disabled (mentally disabled and possibly because of his work) doctor. Will prison work attract some less qualified doctors, maybe even lots of them? Yes. It is not pleasant work. It will also attract some of the most wonderful doctors and wear them down. Why pick on people. This guy won a lawsuit or claim of some sort. I would guess it was for disability discrimination.

I know his pay seems high to you, but if you saw how much he invested in his education, how long he trained at low or no pay, you might not thing so.

Stop getting distracted. It's the corporate CEOs that have done the worst work and received the biggest salaries. They are the villains, not the prison surgeons who get mentally ill on the job.

Totally misleading headline--2/3 of the salary that is being held up as shocking is actually backpay. I'm not sure that the facts are even straight, less than $800,000 is just not that much when there are at least a handful of public college coaches in the state making 2-3 times that in salary ( not to mention as much as a million dollars extra in bonuses, side deals, and excess benefits). Geez, there are assistant college coaches making in excess of $1 million.

CEOs actively rip off California consumers and pull in huge multimillion dollar salaries and the newspaper tries to gin up outrage over a doctor making $235K a year?