Columnist Tom Walsh calls the city of Detroit's payrolls "wildly bloated in several areas compared with other major U.S. cities." He points out that the city employs 18,000 persons, second only to the Detroit Public Schools' 23,000. Wayne State is mentioned in a list of several other of the city's top employers. Walsh criticizes the Detroit City Council for requesting a 4 percent budget increase to its $17 million budget. "No wonder Detroit's administrative costs have ballooned when the administrators in charge of the purse strings pad their own payroll," he says.