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Shared
sacrifice? Some Malloy commissioners making lots more than what Rell
was paying. Hartford
Region September 13, 2011
Gov. Dannel Malloy
talked a lot about “shared sacrifice” as he pushed through hefty tax
increases,
state worker concessions and spending cuts, but several of his top
commissioners got sweet salary increases over what their predecessors
earned
under former Gov. M. Jodi Rell.
The biggest beneficiary, according to state payroll records, is
Malloy’s new
commissioner of the Department of Economic and Community Development,
Catherine
H. Smith. She’s earning $25,717 more than the last DECD head, Joan
McDonald, a
17.8 percent increase that brings Smith’s pay to $170,000.
Smith isn’t even the highest paid of Malloy’s department heads. That
title goes
to Ben Barnes, the secretary of the Office of Policy and Management,
with an
annual salary of $186,999, which represents a 14.1 percent boost over
Rell’s
OPM budget chief, Robert Genuario.
Second on Malloy’s pay chart is his new transportation commissioner,
James P.
Redeker, whose state salary is now $175,000 a year. (That’s a 3.1
percent raise
over what the last full Department of Transportation chief, Joseph
Marie, was
pulling down.)
Redeker’s salary is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, because
Malloy
spent eight months conducting a “nationwide search” for a new DOT
commissioner,
only to settle for the man who’d been acting as Malloy’s interim
department
head. Redeker, 57, is also what’s called a “double dipper,” taking a
$104,521
annual pension payment from New Jersey Transit, where he worked for
30-plus
years before joining Connecticut’s DOT.
According to Malloy’s press spokeswoman, Colleen Flanagan, “The
salaries
offered to various commissioners were based on a combination of
factors,
including the salaries of their predecessors, their current salary
[from their
prior job] and the experience they brought to each of these positions.”
Flanagan also notes that some of these Malloy commissioners are now in
charge
of larger agencies resulting from state consolidations. Smith, for
example, is
in charge of an economic development agency that now includes the
culture and
tourism office and the Office of Workforce Competitiveness. (Redeker’s
agency
wasn’t merged with anything, and Barnes only got bits and pieces from
other
departments.)
“Governor Malloy is immensely pleased with the quality and caliber of
those
people he’s selected as commissioners,” Flanagan adds.
Some of the other winners in Malloy’s cabinet include Donald DeFronzo,
head of
the state Department of Administrative Services, which was partially
merged
with the public works agency. He’s making $160,000 annually, a 15.4
percent
increase over what Rell’s DAS chief was getting.
Daniel C. Esty, is receiving $139,000 salary as head of Malloy’s newly
combined
environmental/energy agency, a 6.9 percent boost over Rell’s
commissioner of
environmental protection. And the new social services commissioner,
Roderick L.
Bremby, is pulling in $170,000 a year, which comes out to a 6.8 percent
jump
from his predecessor’s salary.
Malloy’s Democratic team also has a few salary losers when compared to
Rell’s
Republican administration.
Terrence W. Macy, Malloy’s commissioner of developmental services, has
an
annual salary of $150,000. That’s 10.7 percent less than what Peter H.
O’Meara
got for the job under Rell. Our new Department of Motor Vehicles chief,
Melody
A. Currey, took a 4.3 percent pay hit from what Robert Ward was making
as
Rell’s DMV commissioner. Currey’s salary is $151,000 a year.
Several of those cases involved long-serving Rell commissioners who
began their
service at department heads at lower salaries, which rose over time.
Pay records from the state Comptroller’s Office show that nine of
Malloy’s
cabinet members are making more than their Rell predecessors, six are
making
less, and six - several of them Rell administration hold-overs - are
making the
same. (This isn’t a complete listing of Malloy’s cabinet, in part
because a
couple of Rell’s cabinet agencies have been consolidated with other
departments
under Malloy, and also because the salary for Malloy’s new education
commissioner, Stephan Pryor, hasn’t been determined as yet.)
Adding up the salaries of those 21 commissioners, Malloy’s annual
cabinet
payroll comes to at least $3.18 million a year, or about $75,000 more
than
Rell’s.
Shared
Sacrifice Bullshit
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