State workers incensed by the Sacramento Bee’s invasion of their individual privacy have an unlikely champion: Bee Metro columnist Marcos Bretón.

Bretón used his March 26 column to announce that government workers are unfairly despised by Sacramentans—this after his paper grievously violated the personal space of millions of state workers by publishing their individual salaries and other occupational information in an online database hosted at their official Web site. (The Bee gloats that the site received two million page views in its first three days.)

Bravo, Marcos, bravo—way to close those doors after the cows come home.

Bretón writes, “It’s a pervasive feeling that the backbone of Sacramento’s work force must be lazy, inefficient and definitely overpaid.” Is it not from such false premises and generalizations that the Bee created their online database of state worker salaries? Is it not the Bee that is reinforcing the idea that civil servants aren’t worth their salaries? (Answer: Yes)

As of this writing, Bretón has yet to connect those oh-so-obvious dots that link his paper to the institutional resentment that clouds the public’s attitude concerning government employees.

Still, Bretón got this one right; too bad his employer has yet to make the same realization and take down a Web site that not only serves to violate the privacy of innocent people but intensifies an unfair estimation of the talent and worth of civil servants.