Think Seattle City Light director Jorge Carrasco's $225,000 salary is high? That's nothing compared to his counterpart in Tacoma, Tacoma Public Utilities director Bill Gaines, who topped out the list of top-paid Tacoma employees last year at $300,595. In fact, several Tacoma city workers make more than Carrasco, including city manager Eric Anderson ($248,911) and deputy utility director Theodore Coates ($233,585).

The Tacoma News Tribune reports that

745 city employees were in the six-figure club, making $100,000 or more. That's up from 650 in 2009. (This is total gross pay, including overtime.) [Reporter Lewis] Kamb's overview showed highly paid employees benefited more from the city's "Compensation and Classification" review, which resulted in raises for thousands of employees over the past couple years.

Full-time city employees made an average of $74,582 last year. Among larger departments, fire employees took home $96,475, while police employees received $88,680. Lowest paid were library employees at $48,923.

As in Seattle, utilities and law-enforcement employees dominated the list of top-paid employees.