The Road to Fair Compensation : Tollway agencies’ pay structure needs careful scrutiny

The Transportation Corridor Agencies found themselves on the defensive in recent weeks on expenditures to study staff salaries. First, a proposal to spend $24,000 on a survey to make sure that the agency was comparable with similar organizations drew fire from the anti-tax group Committees of Correspondence. Then some board members balked at approving a $10,000 study that would have paid a consultant to rewrite a bonus plan.

Twenty-four thousand dollars here, $10,000 there does add up. More to the point, the entire business of signing on consultants to examine whether workers in this quasi-public agency make enough money, or should be compensated more than they already are, touched a nerve with a skeptical public.

It was not so long ago that tollway officials were under fire for spending thousands on merit raises, cash bonuses and other compensations in the depths of the bankruptcy and during a recession. It seemed to many that the tollway agencies were a power unto themselves, unaccountable and even arrogant.

Indeed, the salary structure of the agency has raised justifiable concern; at least seven of the agency’s 44 employees draw annual salaries of more than $101,000, and William Woollett, the chief executive officer, earned $142,000 last year.

The agency now argues that the nature of what it does is changing as it focuses more on finance and operations and less on planning and construction. It also says that its workers’ pay seems high because the agency contracts much of its work out, and has in house mostly upper-level managers and engineers.

On March 13, OCTCA board members correctly deferred discussion of the bonus plan until the review of salaries could be completed. The board in the past has signed off too hastily on pay. It seems to have become wiser now in the ways of the political perceptions of having a fat-cat public authority that seems beyond the reach of most public scrutiny.

It may be that these expenditures prove warranted. But the agency has invited scrutiny through its previous decisions, and now must live with it. In the meantime, let the board look closely at incentive and compensation issues before making significant fiscal commitments.