Petrelis Files

Nell Warren: Wall Street + AIDS Inc
Executive Salaries Linked

The brilliant mind of novelist and longtime social critic Patricia Nell Warren earlier this week tackled the thorny issue of sky-high compensation in these economic hard times for Big Banking and other corporate executives, and she skillfully linked that issue to the large sums paid to leaders of AIDS organizations.

Patricia's comprehensive look at these pay levels was posted at the Bilerico.com site, where a few comments have applauded her broaching of the salary issue.

Even if my research into Eric Goosby's salary lately weren't nicely featured in the essay, I would still call attention to what Patricia has to say. Still, let me say thanks, Ms. Nell Warren.

I'd like to see her column generate talk in the gay blogosphere over the current compensation packages of Gay Inc leaders at HRC, NGLTF, GLAAD, EQCA, et al. And I'd sure like to know if leaders at those orgs received year-end bonuses for 2008, something I think they should readily self-disclose.

Some fine excerpts from Patricia's essay:

Americans are loving it as President Obama vents at the CEOs who paid themselves bonuses out of bailout funds. People cheered when Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill made her historic speech demanding that CEOs "shouldn't get paid more than the President of the United States gets paid." The rising fury targets a handful of greedy execs who take a huge piece of the pie even as that pie is shrinking.

But... why stop at greedy CEOs of a few big corporations?

For many years now, out-of-control salaries, bonuses, benefits and perks have been festering at the top in other areas of the U.S. workplace. Indeed, these pernicious practices are found in the nonprofit sector too, and result in growing social ills. They have even been reported in the media for years. Yet few Americans have paid any serious attention....till now.

In the LGBT community, many have been oblivious to nonprofit abuses right in our own backyard. ...

One AIDS exec whose salary became a lightning rod for controversy was Pat Christen, director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation for 18 years. By 1999 there were already scattered calls for her resignation. Yet in 2000 she made $207,000 plus benefits, according to tax returns. This at a time when the AIDS Foundation's intake was sharply down. Christen tried to blame the deficit on the economy. But astute observers weren't buying it.

"You'd think they would see the writing on the wall and freeze their salaries," said Jim Illig, director of government relations at Project Open Hand. ...

Today, as I write this, the new lightning rod is Eric Goosby, director of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation's overseas arm, the Pangaea Global AIDS Foundation. President Obama is considering Goosby for the position of U.S. AIDS czar. Yet Goosby is an example of overstuffed AIDS pay.

The other day, gay pundit/activist Mike Petrelis looked at IRS tax reports from Pangaea and shared the figures in his blog. He wrote: "From 2004 through 2007, revenue fell a whopping 68%. [Goosby's] compensation went from $248,935 up to $284,775. Translation? As funds dried up to provide services and life-extending drugs to poor people abroad with HIV, Goosby didn't diminish his salary."

According to Petrelis, 2007 tax reports indicated that Goosby's salary ate 15% of that year's $1.9 million budget at Pangaea.

Defenders of these financial practices insist that a good AIDS exec is worth every penny. Indeed, the AIDS establishment has tried to make it politically incorrect to attack these bloated pay packages. But whether these top people are doing a good job or not, I don't see how paying them such a hefty percentage of an organization's intake can be justified on ethical grounds. Especially when programs affecting human life and welfare have to be axed in order to give them that big paycheck and all the extras. ...