Delaware News Journal
Fifty-one state employees made more than $200,000 in 2020, nearly double the number of people who made that sum the year before.
That s according to a database of state employee salaries provided by the state Office of Management and Budget.
The plethora of high earners is due in part to the COVID-19 pandemic demanding more hours of top health officials and Black Lives Matter protests prompting police to clock in an unrivaled amount of overtime.
Dr. Rick Hong, the medical director of the Division of Public Health, was the highest-paid employee last year – and the only employee to make above $300,000. His total earnings amounted to $301,321, which includes overtime and other earnings.
A Creston man was sentenced to life in prison for shooting a Des Moines man and leaving his body on the side of a rural Madison County road last year.
Gerald Parker, 42, was charged in July with first-degree murder and robbery in the death of Jonathan Hoffman, 39. Hoffman was found July 21 with multiple gunshot wounds near the intersection of Grandview Lane and Macksburg Road.
Parker was sentenced March 3 to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was also sentenced to 25 years in prison on the robbery charge and was ordered to pay $150,000 to Hoffman s family.
In February, a jury convicted Parker on both counts. A woman told investigators that she was in a truck with Parker when they picked up Hoffman in Des Moines to give him a ride to Creston, according to a criminal complaint.