There was a lot of frustration and confusion among the delegates about how the estimated costs for each new business item were arrived at. It had a great effect on voting because measures that would have passed in previous years were defeated because of the projected expense.

I can’t explain each and every estimate, but I can tell you how seemingly random costs of $920 and $1840 were computed. NEA staff time was assigned a cost of $115 per hour, and no NBI with a cost attached was estimated to take less than a day to accomplish. $115 x 8 hour day = $920. Two days = $1,840 and so on.

Naturally, some items had added costs of publishing or dissemination, but staff hours constituted the bulk of the expense. Since $115 an hour multiplies out to more than $230,000 in a work year, it’s reasonable to conclude that the hourly cost was computed to account for two staffers – one professional and one assistant/clerical – salary, benefits and fringes included.