Median CEO pay jumped 27 percent in 2010

While teachers, police officers, firefighters and public employees are being blamed for the Bush recession that has state and local governments struggling to balance their budgets, and public employees have made large concession of pay and benefits, there is some good news: median CEO pay jumped 27 percent in 2010.

According to a USA Today analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International, they found that median CEO pay jumped to a mere $9 million a year, but workers in private industry, meanwhile, saw their compensation grow just 2.1 percent in the 12 months that ended in December 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I have not met any workers in the private or public sector who has gotten a raise in the last couple of years, and some Michigan state employees have taken a pay cut twice so far in the past three years, as well as taking unpaid furlough days to help balance the budget.

American workers are taking home less in real weekly wages than they took home in the 1970s.

The only people doing well in this economy are the superrich and now, apparently, CEOs. In fact, in 1965 the average CEO was earning 24 times what the average worker was making, but that has jumped to 263 times at a time when workers are making concessions in wages and benefits to make a company solvent.

The superrich have gotten spectacularly richer over the last four decades while their fellow citizens either treaded water or lost ground. The top 1 percent of American earners took in 23.5 percent of the nation’s pretax income in 2007 — up from less than 9 percent in 1976. From 2002 to 2007, that top 1 percent’s pretax income increased an extraordinary 10 percent every year. But the boom proved an exclusive affair: in that same period, the median income for non-elderly American households went down and the poverty rate rose.

In addition to a 27 percent pay increase, CEO bonuses are up a whopping 47 percent. It can and will be argued by right-wingers that they earned that large raise by increasing profits 47 percent, but, as USA Today points out, they boosted those profits by cost-cutting – AKA outsourcing - and layoffs. In fact, CEOs who slashed their payrolls the deepest and laid off the most workers took home 42 percent more compensation than the year’s chief executive pay average for S&P 500 companies, according to the 17th annual executive compensation survey by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS).

But the gravy train does not end with a boost in pay and bonuses. CEOs saw the estimated future value of stock and options awards take off in 2010, with the median value gaining 32 percent to $5.6 million. These stock and options, many of which were granted when stock prices were much lower than they are now, stand to create a shower of wealth when CEOs cash them in.

Senate heads off the LSJ and publishes salary info of employees without name

The Michigan Senate is apparently not waiting around for a Freedom of Information request from the Lansing State Journal for salary information on Senate employees and has established a web site with that information, according to an unnamed source in the Senate.

Last month the LSJ posted the public information on 53,000 non-exempt public employees that includes name, title, department, county of the workplace and salary, and it caused an outcry from state employees calling it a callous invasion of privacy. The timing, just days after Senate Majority Leader Mike Bishop falsely claimed state employees were overpaid and demanded the governor rescind a previously negotiated pay raise, so angered state employees that some are talking about a misguided boycott of the LSJ.

Last week the House Business Office that maintains salary information for all Legislative staff members, as well as partisan central staff, received a FOIA request from the LSJ requesting salary information. The Senate has not yet received a FOIA request, so it decided to take a proactive approach and publish the salary information but omit individual names.

The web site lists salary by job title – and it differs from Senate office to Senate office - and then by where the person works. The web page also states that Senate employees are paid a fair and competitive wage for the work they perform. Unionized state employees gave up $300 million in concessions in the last contract.

However, sources said although the Senate has not officially received a FOIA request, the web site does not prelude them from receiving one, supply salary information with the individual’s name and having the LSJ - or any newspaper or blog - publish the public information.

Salaries of House Legislative staff members will soon be published in the LSJ

The salaries of legislative staff members in the Michigan House of Representatives will soon be added to the searchable list of public employee salaries maintained by the Lansing State Journal.

A memo from the House Business Office informing the member offices, as well as partisan central staff, went to the member offices Friday informing them that it had received a Freedom of Information Request from the LSJ requesting the public record information. The Secretary of the Senate maintains the salary of those staffers in the Senate, but I do not have a source there. However, I am assuming the same thing happened there.

The 110 Members in the House are allowed two full-time employees, and their salaries are paid out of their annul office allotment, which is set by the Speaker of the House. The Business Office sets the salaries at a minimum of $20,000 annually and a maximum of $60,000.

Last month the LSJ posted the public information on 53,000 non-exempt public employees that includes name, title, department, county of the workplace and salary.

There was an immediate backlash, and according to the Lansing City Pulse there is a misguided boycott afoot against the LSJ.

The Coalition of State Employee Unions told state employees the unions were coordinating efforts to address the problem, pledging to pursue legal action and urging members to reconsider their Journal subscriptions.

This is perhaps the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard. The newspaper is fulfilling one of its most important and cherished public functions: serving as a public watchdog. I have nothing but respect for public employees, and I was once one and plan to be one again. However, when your salary is paid by pubic taxpayer dollars you give up a bit of privacy.

I really don’t know a whole lot of people who enter public service with the top goal of making a lot of money. Certainly, decent pay is one important consideration, but all most people really want is a decent, living wage. Public employees are not overpaid, and they are hard-working, dedicate professionals.

I, and many other people, question the timing of this, and my only question is why it took so long to do it. In a story in the LSJ talking about the anger of public employees, Executive Editor Mickey Hirten said, “he acknowledged that this is upsetting to workers, especially since this sort of public service journalism hasn't been done in mid-Michigan.” He then went on to cite examples of other newspapers that publish public salaries like The Asbury Park Press in New Jersey and The Boston Herald. The former statement is simply not true.

For the past 20 years the Livingston County Daily Press & Argus in Howell in mid-Michigan has annually published a special section called the “Public Payroll” listing the name, title and salary of every person in the county, that they are aware of, that receives compensation from tax dollars: from U.S. Rep Mike Rogers to the constable in little Conway Township.

The P& A is owned by the same company as the LSJ, Gannett, so it seems a little odd that Hirten would overlook that example. The section is popular, at least with readers. That example kind of blunts some of the outrage and anger over the LSJ publication.

“Roberto Mosqueda, president of the Michigan State Employees Association, said the newspaper went too far when it published the county in which the state employee worked. None of the other eight newspapers publish this information and only Iowa includes it on its official salary database. That basic form of identification could put a conservation officer or any other regulatory agent in jeopardy of retaliatory attack from an angered member of the public, he argued. Corrections officers, for example, could be harassed.”

Obviously, in the example of the P & A the county where they are employed is identified, and no one has ever suffered an attack from an angry citizen or a has a public employee in hiding has ever been tracked down by an angry spouse. There have been, however, some angry citizens upset over the amount of money some public school administrators are making, and that’s the entire point of this.

I want to see the information for all people paid with tax dollars, and there should be no exception to FOIA.