ORONO, Maine — The chancellor of the University of Maine System expressed confidence Friday in the system’s compensation policies in the wake of former UMaine President Robert Kennedy’s resignation as chief of public higher education in Connecticut.
Kennedy, president of the Connecticut Board of Regents for Higher Education, resigned Friday morning amid controversy about his improper authorization of 21 pay raises totaling $262,206. He had held his position for a little more than a year.
A similar controversy earlier this year about pay increases at Maine’s public universities prompted some policy changes after a review by University of Maine System Chancellor James Page. University of Southern Maine President Selma Botman faced questions about 44 raises, totaling $242,000, during a difficult fiscal year.
“That [review] was very comprehensive,” Page said. “We do have good checks and balances in place.”
In Connecticut, Michael Meotti, executive vice president of the Board of Regents for Higher Education, received a $49,000 raise, which represented a 27 percent increase. Meotti announced earlier this week that he would forfeit the raise and return to his annual salary of $183,339.
Elaine Clark, vice president of facilities, received the second-largest raise — a jump from $150,000 to $175,000. Clark, who formerly served as executive director of facilities, real estate and planning at the University of Maine, followed Kennedy by taking a new post with the Connecticut Board of Regents in March.
The 44 USM employees who had raises approved by Botman saw their salaries boosted between 5 percent and 41 percent under the Salaried Employees Compensation and Classification Program, which allows the employees to have their positions reviewed to determine if their work warrants higher pay.
Page announced on March 22, just days after he took office, that he would freeze discretionary pay increases pending a system review of its compensation policies.
Botman stepped down from the presidency in July to take a position in the system office. The move followed a no-confidence vote by USM faculty in May.
The University of Maine System gave its employees more than $7 million in raises between 2006 and 2012 during a period of repeated budget cuts and fiscal uncertainty, according to data the system released in April. But the system’s leaders have said the raises resulted from of shifting roles, with many employees taking on additional work.
Of that $7 million, the system’s flagship campus gave $2.74 million in pay increases during the past seven years.
Meanwhile, some faculty members, who were continuing to work without a contract, voiced frustration that other system employees were receiving raises.
Kennedy was president at UMaine from 2005 to 2011.
There are 351 fewer full-time equivalent positions in the system than there were in 2007, according to Tracey Bigney, the system’s chief human resources officer. That means other employees have had to fill some of those gaps by moving to different positions or taking on more job duties.
Page said Friday afternoon during a telephone interview that he didn’t think it would be appropriate to comment on the situation in Connecticut, but that he was confident the policy now in place in the University of Maine System would encourage fair raises while ensuring they are properly vetted.
Page took over as chancellor in March, about 10 months after Kennedy resigned from the UMaine presidency to take the job in Connecticut.
The review conducted by Page and system staff found there was a need to improve consistency in payroll coding to distinguish between categories of increases — for example, to avoid confusion about whether a person received a pay increase because of a promotion versus an increased workload in the employee’s current job.
The system also decided it should set limits to how much salaries could increase by at one time, and that “a heightened level of scrutiny” should be applied when an employee has received a discretionary increase in the past three years. The system also said that university presidents should keep the bigger picture in mind when awarding raises.
“While recognizing and rewarding employee initiative and performance, presidents must enforce a culture of accountability for salary increases,” the recommendations state.
The compensation review program policy is likely to be revisited and reassessed in the future, according to the chancellor.
“We’ll want to periodically take a look back and make sure we’ve got [the policies] where we want them to be,” Page said.
Kennedy could not be reached for comment Friday.
Michelle Hood, chairwoman of the University of Maine System board of trustees, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment. She did not respond to an email message.
What about Jack Cosgroves pay?
As you may recall, the head coaches of at least the major UMaine teams apparently get additional funds that are separate from their salaries. These additional funds are not reported. And recall that Coach Whitehead annually gets a $5000 increase to his base salary regardless of how the men’s hockey team does. This was his alleged hedge against inflation, as reported in the press when his last contract was negotiated.
One has to appreciate the rich irony of Chancellor Page defending payraises for selected top System employees while the faculty union continues negotiations for any payraises its members after no payraises whatsoever since the old contract began in July 2009 and ended in July 2011 when the System once again declared it had no money in its huge reserve fund. VERY FEW System employees have lost their jobs–and, in most cases, they’ve been given new jobs at the same or even higher pay. Faculty know that the System intends to keep stalling for another year or two or three.
The people in power need to realize they are paid with taxpayer dollars, and they are held accountable for the peoples money, sadly many forget this.
The people in power could hardly care about your feelings and mine. Their commitment to the taxpayers is rhetorical only. They don’t lose sleep any more than Eastern Maine Health Care CEO Michele Hood loses sleep over the pay for either her nurses and other low-level staff or the UME System employees she also rules over as Chair of the System Board of Trustees (thanks to her appt. by then Gov. Baldacci).
The U of M will not be able to be condensed and improved, until, somehow these stuff shirt dinosaurs are kicked out on their a–, new blood, with fresh insights and new ideas are needed, these guys are so out of touch, with the world of today, I mean Kennedy, what does he think he is doing?? Good Lord.
The complexity of the UMS and campus administrative environments and the proliferation of programs came to be in no small measure because successive Chancellors and Boards made narrowly-based decisions — one “good thing” stacked on another.
The proliferation of academic programs has resulted in lightly populated upper level courses and a need to employ faculty with narrow specialization at high prices in many cases. In recent decades, experienced faculty with years of admirable service have often found new hires being offered salaries even greater than their own. Some of this effect was driven by the larger market, but the proliferation of programs and specialization have helped to drive up faculty salaries and create academic support infrastructure.
The expense of administrative personnel and electronic systems supporting administrative activities has grown far faster than the value of the “product” over the history of the UMS and especially so in the last 20 years. Where once the administrative staffing was relatively flat and thin, the pyramid building of recent years has generated layers of ever more highly paid administrators.
If this were a computer program, the boss would order a thorough refactoring. If this outfit were the target of a corporate raider, they’d cut costs 40% and quality but 15%.
The high salary of a few individuals in the University of Maine System is a symptom of a larger structural problem.
Welfare for liberals.
Why, in an institution or system for higher EDUCATION, do raises go for administration and not to the persons doing the actual classroom work? This work includes not only class time, but preparation, correcting assignments, papers, and exams, advising students, serving on administrators’ committees, directing theses, and doing the research/reading/writing that is required to keep up with one’s field. And that’s the short version. So administrative salaries increase, while educators’ salaries decline. Shows where university priorities are and why quality of education declines while tuition increases? This is not the university I admired at the beginning of my career.
Prof. March is, of course, on target. But things keep getting worse as the generally uninformed Trustees make ever greater demands on the shrinking no. of faculty and spend hundreds of thousands on outside consultants whose work could instead often be done by System staff. The Trustees’ real desire is to make as many traditional courses as possible into online courses and to replace as many full-time faculty with far cheaper adjuncts. Meanwhile the top honchos get paid handsomely.