A former Redlands deputy police chief topped California’s public payroll in 2025, taking home $1.26 million in total compensation \u2014 more than the combined salaries of the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego, state compensation data show.<\/p>\n
According to the state controller’s office<\/a>, the former deputy chief received $1.2 million in total wages, including $890,467 in “other pay” and $231,099 in accrued sick and vacation pay, in addition to $81,804 in regular salary.<\/p>\n The city of Redlands also contributed $55,864 toward the former employee’s retirement and health benefits, bringing the final compensation to about $1.26 million.<\/p>\n By comparison, the combined compensation of the mayors of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego is about $1.2 million, including retirement and health benefits, according to the data<\/a>.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for the Redlands Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.<\/p>\n The news about the Redlands employee, first reported by the San Bernardino Sun<\/a>, came to light last month following the state controller’s scheduled publication of city-level compensation data.<\/p>\n The controller’s office began tracking the salaries of public employees in 2010 amid the revelation that leaders in the working-class town of Bell<\/a> in southeast Los Angeles County were receiving some of the largest salaries in the country.<\/p>\n Since then, the state agency has been collecting and publishing the compensation data of more than 2 million workers across more than 5,000 public agencies \u2014 including special districts, universities and state departments.<\/p>\n In publishing the data, the agency provides a snapshot<\/a> of the highest-paid employees in the state, though it does not identify workers by name. After the Redlands deputy police chief, the second-highest-paid employee in 2025 was a Los Angeles Fire Department battalion chief, followed by a transmission and distribution supervisor with the L.A. Department of Water and Power, according to the data.<\/p>\n Although the state agency does not identify the employees, Transparent California, a nonprofit database of public employee pay, identified the Redlands worker as Travis Martinez.<\/p>\n According to Redlands’ city records<\/a> and the Redlands News,<\/a> Martinez retired last April as part of a $871,956 settlement agreement related to a whistleblower claim against the city.<\/p>\n Martinez could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.<\/p>\n