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1) EIA Exclusive: NEA Officers
and Staff Salaries and Benefits. The Education
Intelligence Agency periodically publishes details of the compensation paid
to officers and staff of the National Education Association, and the numbers
require some explanation, so bear with me if you have heard some of this
before.
Because it has some members in the
private sector, national NEA is required to file a Labor Organization Annual
Report (Form LM-2) with the U.S. Department of Labor. Only a handful of
state affiliates are also required to file the report, and Labor Department
efforts to extend the requirement to all NEA state affiliate will now
probably disappear under the Obama administration.
The filing requirements are very
specific and useful, though the categories into which NEA revenue and
expenditures are divided are often unnecessarily confusing. Because of this,
both union supporters and opponents mischaracterize the sums that come
directly from the report.
For example, the Labor Department
includes travel expenses in its "total disbursements" to officers and
employees. Though these are valuable statistics, by no means should travel
expenses be considered income for the individuals involved. Conversely, NEA
officers tend to emphasize their base salary on the rare occasions they
discuss compensation, without accounting for any cash allowances they
receive for housing or benefits, which is taxable income. Also, many NEA
officers elect to defer a portion of the income earned during their terms in
office, thereby reducing the total received in a given year.
Keep this information in mind as we walk
through the numbers.
NEA national headquarters took in $337.7
million in dues and agency fees in 2007-08, the major portion of its total
receipts of $358.8 million. The union's expenditures divide roughly into
thirds: one-third is returned to state affiliates in the form of UniServ
grants and other direct contributions and subsidies; one-third pays for
buildings, maintenance, paper clips, software, and the assorted capital
costs of operating a large membership organization; and one-third pays the
salaries and benefits of NEA's employees, executives and retirees.
NEA's elected officials are not
considered to be employees of the organization, though many are compensated
for their time spent in office. Working from the top, the 2007-08 payments
were as follows:
NEA President Reg Weaver, in his final
year in office, received his annual salary, plus what is probably the entire
amount of income he deferred from previous years, for a total of $483,868.
He received an additional $70,656 in taxable allowances for a grand total of
$554,524. The cash allowances for NEA's three executive officers are meant
to compensate them for the cost of maintaining two homes, plus the fact that
they do not receive retirement benefits from NEA during their union tenure
(they do, however, continue to accrue retirement credits from the school
districts in which they still ostensibly work, though in some cases that was
decades ago).
NEA Vice President Dennis Van Roekel
received a base salary of $265,212 and allowances of $53,885, for a total of
$319,097. NEA Secretary-Treasurer Lily Eskelsen received a base salary of
$248,349 and allowances of $54,285 for a total of $302,634.
The salaries of the members of the NEA
Executive Committee are also included. Michael Billirakis of Ohio received
$163,543, Mark Cebulski of Wisconsin received $140,895, Carolyn Crowder of
Oklahoma received $112,539, Christy Levings of Kansas received $144,988,
Paula Monroe of California received $120,111, and Marsha Smith of Maryland
received $195,490.
Most members of the NEA board of
directors receive no pay from the national union, though some received
amounts ranging from the nominal to the significant, most of which were
probably payments to school districts to reimburse them for substitutes
hired while the director was released to perform union business.
The highest paid employee at NEA
headquarters is Executive Director John Wilson, who received $296,930 in
base salary in 2007-08.
The rest of NEA's $66 million payroll
covers the 600+ people who collected wages from NEA national headquarters
during 2007-08. The Labor Department's list includes everyone who received a
paycheck from NEA during that fiscal year. However, it is clear that the
average full-time wage for all workers at NEA headquarters is well into
six figures.
NEA also paid out more than $46.1
million last year in benefits to its employees and retirees. These payments
include pensions and retiree health care, so dividing these costs among
current workers would not be the most accurate accounting.
NEA also has a program for smaller state
affiliates that probably would have some difficulty paying the going salary
for an executive director with only state dues money. These state affiliate
executive directors are technically NEA employees but receive their
direction from the elected representatives of the state affiliates. They
include:
Lydia Garcia-Dougherty (NEA Alaska) -
$141,532
John Yrchik (Connecticut Education
Association) - $185,112
Howard Weinberg (Delaware State
Education Association) - $143,241
H.T. Nguyen (Federal Education
Association) - $207,698
Joan Husted (Hawaii State Teachers
Association) - $108,400
Michael McCartney Healy (Hawaii State
Teachers Association) - $76,731
James Shackelford (Idaho Education
Association) - $178,964
Frank Yates (Mississippi Association of
Educators) - $125,544
Ben Simmons (Missouri NEA) - $157,049
David Smith (MEA-MFT in Montana) -
$103,900
Edward Shumaker (NEA New Hampshire) -
$119,922
Colleen Borst (North Carolina
Association of Educators) - $137,224
Lela Odom (Oklahoma Education
Association) - $123,797
Robert Walsh (NEA Rhode Island) -
$155,402
Robert Whitehead (South Dakota Education
Association) - $132,145
Bryce Healy (South Dakota Education
Association) - $99,313
E.C. Walker (Texas State Teachers
Association) - $143,618
Joel Cook (Vermont NEA) - $138,591
Jerry Caruthers (Virginia Education
Association) - $155,811
Jean Hayek (Wyoming Education
Association) - $101,858
The U.S. Department of Labor web site is
not the most user-friendly site in the world, so if you wish to examine
NEA's disclosure report, it would probably be easier to use this shortcut:
a) Follow this link:
http://erds.dol-esa.gov/query/getOrgQry.do
b) In the box next to File Number, type
000-342
c) Click Submit
d) On the page that comes up, click on
the link that reads "2008 Report"
e) Wait for it to load, because it will
take some time.
2) Last Week's Intercepts.
EIA's blog,
Intercepts, covered these topics from January 20-26:
*
Captain Obvious Strikes Again! Whaddaya know? School district
consolidation doesn't save money after all.
*
Ground-Breaking Development? Perspective.
*
Open Letters. We all have wish lists.
3)
Quote of the Week.
"Insiders felt that Mr. Paterson was only humoring the leader of the
teachers union by considering her candidacy until the end." - Crain's New
York Business, commenting on the possibility that AFT/UFT President
Randi Weingarten was a finalist for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. (January
25
Crain's New York Business) |
