I have heard that these top salaries get skewed because state employees tend to get a lot of "back end" compensation. So if it's your last year of employment, you collect unused vacation and sick pay. They also put in as much overtime as possible because it forces a higher pension due to averaging of the last few years of pay to determine pension amounts. So you will see a guy who maybe made 70k getting 100k+ during his last one or two years.