Rachel Kaprielian, Frank DePaola and Christopher Willenborg, together, will receive $14,000 in pay raises.
Who are these people? And why should you care?
All three are Massachusetts Department of Transportation administrators. And yesterday, Boston.com reports, the MassDOT board of directors voted to increase their salaries by 3.5 percent.
Kaprielian, who heads the Registry of Motor Vehicles, will receive a $5,000 raise, increasing her salary from $137,000 to $142,000; DePaola, administrator of the MassDOT Highway Division will receive a $5,300 raise, from $149,300 to $154,600; and Willenborg, an Aeronautics Division administrator, will take home an extra $4,000 in salary, from $114,000 to $118,000.
“I hope you agree that they’ve done an outstanding job,” MassDOT Secretary Richard Davey told the board, as quoted by the Boston Globe.
Davey reportedly maintained the raises were based on merit – “top-notch performance evaluations,” the Globe puts it.
Joseph C. Bonfiglio, chairman of MassDOT’s Committe on Compensation and Labor Relations told the Globe that the board “felt very comfortable making this recommendation.”
According to a report by the Boston Business Journal, state workers received “some $3.66 billion in base compensation,” last year, with salaries of about 2,500 public employees expected to make more than $100,000 per year, included in the fold.
The pay increase comes at a time when the Department of Transportation – and yes, most notably – the MBTA are strapped for cash. Last year, the BBJ reports, “the MBTA spent 50 percent more on employee wages and benefits than all of the fare revenue collected on its trains, subway, buses and ferries.”
With late night MBTA service figuring to be at the top of mayor-elect Marty Walsh’s to-do list, the news of pay increases is sure to anger some, and make negotiations more testy.
Last month, the Globe reported that the MBTA and Boston Carmen’s Union filed dueling lawsuits, disputing an arbitrator’s award that would dish out an extra $10,000 to 14,000 in salary to MBTA employees, retroactive to 2010.
These raises, the MBTA said, would cost between $62 million and $88 million, putting the transit agency in “financial jeopardy.” In a message to 6,000 members, including numerous MBTA workers in various positions, the Globe reports, a union official claimed that the T was trying to “shortchange them” by fighting the reward.
For perspective: Today’s BBJ report stated that the MBTA’s operating cash flow last year, after employee wages and benefits were factored in, was negative $745.8 million.
So what will Walsh do? He supports late-night MBTA service and has said he wants to fund the services from a combination of state funding and public-private partnerships. But how much money will be left?
Image via wired.com
