(Cross-posted from The COFAR Blog)
More than 600 executives employed by corporate human service providers in Massachusetts received some $100 million per year in salaries and other compensation, according to our updated survey of the providers’ nonprofit federal tax forms.
By our calculations, state taxpayers are on the hook each year for up to $85 million of that total compensation.
We reviewed the federal tax forms for some 300 state-funded, corporate providers, most of which provide residential and day services to persons with developmental disabilities.
The following is a summary chart of our latest survey results (click on the chart to enlarge):
For the complete survey chart, click here.
We first released our survey about a year ago, when we found that more than 550 executives working for some 250 state-funded corporate providers of services to people with developmental disabilities in Massachusetts received a total of $80.5 million in annual compensation.
COFAR has also previously raised concerns that increasing amounts of money going to provider executives have not translated into higher pay for direct-care workers in Massachusetts.
The latest survey reports on 635 executives who received total annual compensation of $102.4 million and average annual compensation per employee of $161,231. The survey was based on provider tax forms filed in either the 2011 or 2012 tax years. Those tax forms are available online at www.guidestar.org.
The survey sample included 100 CEO’s and presidents, making an average of $210,227 in salaries and benefits; and 107 executive directors receiving an average of $130,835 in compensation. As the chart above shows, the survey also included 67 chief financial officers, 31 chief operating officers, 100 vice presidents, 110 directors, and 120 other officers, all earning, on average, over $100,000 a year.
A state regulation limits state payments to provider executives to $158,101, as of fiscal year 2013. Money earned by executives above the state cap is supposed to come from sources other than state funds.
Based on this regulation, we calculated that provider executives are eligible for up to $85 million a year in state funding to cover those total salary and benefits costs. Our calculation was based on identifying the companies paying executives at or above the state threshold of $158,101, and assuming that amount as the maximum state payment for each of those companies’ executives.
Among the top-paying providers in our latest survey was the May Institute, which paid two employees a total of $999,221 in the 2012 tax year. Both employees were listed as president and CEO of the provider. The May Institute’s federal tax form shows that one of the two employees, Walter Christian, worked for the company until December 2012 and received a total of $725,674 in salary and benefits in that tax year, which started on July 1, 2012. Christian was replaced as president and CEO by Lauren Solotar, who received a total of $273,547 in that same tax year, which ended on June 30, 2013.
Despite the regulation capping compensation payments by the state, the state auditor reported in May 2013 that the state had improperly reimbursed the May Institute, a corporate provider to the Department of Developmental Services, for hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to company executives in excess of that cap. COFAR had previously reported in 2011 that the state may have paid Christian and other executives of the May Institute more than the state’s regulatory limit on individual executive salaries.
The following charts show the top earning presidents/CEO’s and executive directors in our latest survey and the number of those executives holding each title in each company:
Most of the providers surveyed are under contract to the Department of Developmental Services, which manages or provides services to people with intellectual disabilities who are over the age of 22. The providers operate group homes and provide day programs, transportation and other services to tens of thousands of intellectually disabled persons in the DDS system.
As we have noted, the state’s priority has been to boost funding dramatically to corporate residential providers, in particular, while at the same time slowly starving state-operated care, including state-run group homes and developmental centers, of revenue.
Funding to DDS corporate residential providers rose past the $1 billion mark for the first time in the current fiscal year. The line item was increased by more than $140 million –or more than 16 percent—over prior-year spending in fiscal 2015 dollars. At the same time, both the former governor’s and the legislative budgets either cut or provided much more meager increases for most other DDS line items.
More financial information about nonprofit corporate providers, including compensation of executives, can be found at www.guidestar.org.
Thanks for bringing this up again, because it bears watching and hoping that the state will finally do something about it. These are their vendors, after all. Colossal salaries and paying their staff a pittance. And correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t private DDS providers attempting to get state benefits for their employees, like free college tuition, etc. some time back?
This is the basic game plan for a wide array of privatization schemes in education, social services and similar sectors.
You can’t award yourself lavish salaries when you work for the Commonwealth, (unless you are a legislator and even then it is subject to scrutiny).
still almost completely funded by the state. The public is outraged over the number of managers in government, but it’s small potatoes compared to the hundreds if not thousands of highly-paid executives that manage companies that contract with the state.
I remember that great quote..”When they say it isn’t about the money… It’s about the money..”.
We have too many pumped MBA’s running around with service economy pipe dreams that involve some kind of corporate welfare and capture of tax money.
The rentier instinct is very compelling with that bunch. It isn’t about earning anything so much as it’s about positioning to seek rents where none were extracted before.
the contractor that initially screwed up the healthcare.gov website: “We continue to view the federal government as a significant growth opportunity.”
We’ve had a fat run of selfish cream of the crap going after that prize, seemingly forever. It is a significant downside of this transformation to a primarily service based economy.
Most lack the tech or science background to flourish in IT or Biotech so they just look for wheels to reinvent with new rents ticked in that they can extract.
It’s like alchemy.
this happens with apparently complete lack of oversight and accountability!
I know that many of these providers have affiliates and subsidiaries. Do these numbers include them?
at http://www.mass.gov/eohhs/gov/departments/dds/providers.html
Many of these companies do have affiliates and subsidiaries that are probably not on that list, but that provide ancillary services such as transportation. It’s possible there could be additional managers and executives working for those subsidiaries, but we haven’t checked that.