The average state employee has a yearly salary of about $46,600, according to a roster of state employees obtained by The Providence Journal under the state’s Access to Public Records Act.

But a wide range of salaries goes into that average, from $1 a year each for two special assistants to Governor Carcieri to $286,840 a year for the men’s basketball coach at the University of Rhode Island.

The Journal obtained the list to take a closer look at the cost of state government as state leaders have been debating issues such as state employee layoffs and the privatizing of some state jobs.

The list shows the yearly pay that each of the state’s 16,106 employees was scheduled to get, as of June 29. It shows the set salary for employees who are paid that way and a calculated yearly pay for employees who are paid an hourly rate, based on their normal scheduled workweek. It includes part-time, full-time and seasonal employees.

The list takes into account longevity pay and other enhancements to base salary, but does not include money paid on top of base salary, such as overtime. It also does not reflect actual pay for employees who may not work a full year, such as new hires or those who take unpaid leave.

In a separate public records request, The Journal has received records that show actual earnings, including overtime, plus the cost of benefits, for each employee. Those will be examined in a report in tomorrow’s Journal.

The Journal requested the state employee roster on June 11. State law requires agencies to provide records within 10 business days, which would have been June 25. But, state officials said they could not compile an accurate list of who works for the state at what salaries in the two weeks allowed. They invoked a section of state law that provides a 20-business-day extension, and gave the newspaper the records on June 29.

The median state employee salary — meaning half earn more and half earn less — is $46,595.60. The mean salary — calculated by totaling all salaries and dividing by the number of employees — is $51,440.97. The second number is almost $5,000 higher than the first because the state’s highest paid employees tend to make a lot more than those in the middle of the pack.

And those top earners are dominated by higher education employees, especially at URI.

Five of the top 10 salaries are at the state’s flagship college. That includes the president, the vice president for research, the environmental and life sciences dean and a mechanical engineering professor. Throw in the presidents of Rhode Island College and the Community College of Rhode Island and higher education accounts for 7 of the top 10 employees.

The 3 others in the top 10 are the chief justice of the state Supreme Court and medical directors at the Department of Health and the Department of Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals.

The top 10 salaries range from basketball coach James E. Baron’s $286,840 to the $179,037.10 salary of Chief Justice Frank J. Williams.

The two lowest paid employees, earning $1 a year, are Carcieri’s special assistants: his wife, Suzanne O. Carcieri, and Charles L. Donahue, described as a senior health-care adviser.

URI accounts for 21 percent of the top 100 salaries, but only 15 percent of the total number of state employees.

Not surprisingly, the judiciary is also well represented in the top 100 salaries, with 53 of those salaries.

The lowest paid employees are clustered tightly together, with 9,918 of them making $30,000 to just under $60,000. While almost 10,000 employees are packed into that $30,000 spread, only 4,755 make from $60,000 to $286,840, a spread of more than $225,000.

In all, 620 state employees — about 4 percent — make $100,000 or more.

When it comes to looking at mean — or average — salaries for each of the 24 state departments listed by the state’s personnel office, the state colleges do not do as well as their top salaries would suggest. While the 10 highest-salaried state college employees make more than $170,000 each, the mean salary for state college employees is about $53,800. That ranks state college employees, on average, as the 14th-highest-salaried department, out of the 24 departments.

The highest average salary is claimed by the Office of Higher Education, a small department — 15 employees, many of whom hold upper-level jobs. The mean salary there is about $74,200. The next two highest are the Department of Education, at about $65,400, and the judiciary, at about $62,600. At the other end of the list are Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, at about $45,400; the legislature, at about $40,200; and Environmental Management, which has a large number of seasonal employees, at about $29,900.

State colleges are the leading employer in state government, accounting for 4,189 — or 26 percent — of the 16,106 state employees. Next comes Mental Health, Retardation and Hospitals, with 1,773, or 11 percent; the Department of Corrections, with 1,477, or 9 percent; and the Department of Human Services, with 1,150, or 7 percent.

In most departments in state government, the highest ranking official is not the employee with the highest salary. Department heads, especially those who are elected, tend to have shorter tenures than their top lieutenants, whose careers span several decades.

As examples, Governor Carcieri’s $117,817 salary makes him the 15th highest salaried employee in the Executive Department. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch ranks eighth in his department with a salary of $105,416. Secretary of State A. Ralph Mollis is second in his with $99,214. State Treasurer Frank T. Caprio has the fourth highest salary in the Treasury Department, with $99,214. And Department of Transportation Director Jerome F. Williams, at $143,000, trails the DOT’s chief engineer, Edmund T. Parker Jr., who makes $143,187.60. Parker is currently suspended with pay while authorities investigate how consultant contracts were handled by his office.

Exceptions include the Department of Education, the Department of Environmental Management and the judiciary, where the highest salaries go to the top officials.

One “department” is described as “other commissions and agencies.” It includes employees of the Coastal Resources Management Council, the public defender’s office and the Rhode Island Ethics Commission. The highest salary in the commissions and agencies category, $137,779.40, goes to Terrence N. Tehan, director of the state’s Atomic Energy Commission. The Atomic Energy Commission is the federal license holder for the nuclear reactor at URI’s Narragansett Bay Campus. The reactor is used for medical, environmental and physical science research.

Tomorrow: Some state employees earn more in overtime than their base pay.

pparker@projo.com