And what would the CEO of a private company with a similar number of employees, annual budget, etc?</p>
<p>Seriously, executives in the public sector generally won’t be paid quite as much, but their overall compensation will be affected by private sector compensation of individuals with similar job responsibilities. It’s not “two wrongs” - it’s the same “wrong.” Executive pay is inherently arbitrary. If you didn’t create the company, invent the widget, etc., your CEO pay is set by whatever the board of directors thinks is “right” and it generally makes that decision by seeing what other CEOs are paid - and vice versa. It’s a vicious circle, with the foxes guarding the henhouse. Expecting public sector boards to operate by a different set of criteria is unrealistic.</p>
<p>Kluge, I’m not sure if this was your intent but your post sounds like you’re railing against me. My point in posting that was the comparison between the Director in Toronto and the woman in Syosset that Xiggi wrote about. I think that the salary paid here sounds very reasonable while the one in NY sounds ridiculous.</p>
<p>Sorry Alwaysamom - not my intent by any means. I agree that the Toronto salary sounds reasonable. My point is that the compensation of CEOs in the public sector is going to track the pay of CEO’s of similarly sized organizations in the private sector. A quick google finds that CEO’s of companies with less than $2B annual revenues in the oil industry receive average total compensation of about $4M per year. Companies in petroleum-related businesses with less than $500M in annual revenues still pay their CEOs an average of $2.4M in total annual compensation. <a href=“http://www.pearlmeyer.com/Pearl/media/PearlMeyer/PDF/PMP-PPT-CEOPayinOilPatch-WH-DB-7-20.11.pdf[/url]”>Energy Compensation Consulting | Pearl Meyer;
<p>So why are people surprised that top executives in the public sector are paid – well, not quite that much, but somewhere in the same ballpark, albeit in the bleachers? </p>
<p>It’s not “two wrongs.” It’s all part of the same problem. Executive pay - which, unlike the pay received by performers and athletes, is not governed by their direct contribution to the bottom line - is ludicrously inflated. And that inflation spills over into the public sector.</p>
<p>The superintendent of our district was fired- * without cause* because board was chicken to fire her with cause.
We had to pay her a years salary. $264,000.
She recently got a job in Michigan.</p>
<p>Once again, I am not a defender of Arlene Ackerman. I applauded her firing, and wished it had happened earlier. But being superintendent of the Philadelphia School District is an awful, impossible job – sort of a combination of being the CEO of a huge, bankrupt company, a government official answerable to not one but effectively three hostile legislatures, and, well, a clay pigeon. It’s a political job, but with no power base, no fundraisers, no patronage, and an army of subordinates out to get you. (The competent ones, that is. And you don’t even mind them, as long as they are competent. It’s the INcompetent ones that keep you up at night – like the woman who managed not to tell her superior or anyone with any authority that the IRS had scheduled an on-site employment tax audit on a multi-million dollar issue, so an army of IRS agents showed up and no one knew they were coming.)</p>
<p>No one in that job has had a life besides work in the 30 or so years I have been aware of it. No one in that job has been successful. It’s not a job anyone would (or should) take for other than top-flight compensation, because no one’s career has been benefited by taking it.</p>
<p>I daresay it’s exponentially harder than being Director of Education for the Toronto School District. (Here, the Chief Education Officer is often not the Superintendent, and I think that was the case with Ackerman as well.) That’s not a dis on Toronto at all – it’s a compliment. I wish my city worked as well as Toronto.</p>