Washington state system highlights lavish pay of executives here
B.C. Ferries president got $544,000 including perks last year, while part-time board chair raked in six figures; Wash. state’s ferry boss makes $152,000
If you’re tempted to buy the spin coming from B.C. Ferries about the massive salaries, bonuses, double-dip pensions, company cars and the rest of the executive pork-barrelling going on, take a peek south of the border first.
The Washington state ferry system is comparable to our own in many ways, but executive compensation is not one of them.
The head of Washington State Ferries is David Moseley, who’s been at the helm of the state’s 22-vessel fleet for five years.
Moseley’s current annual salary is $151,949 (all figures in Canadian currency).
Compare that to Michael Corrigan, president of B.C. Ferries, who last year earned a base salary of $364,000 — more than double his Washington counterpart.
The disparities don’t end there. Last year, Corrigan banked $107,309 in employer contributions to his two — yes, two — pension plans.
Moseley has one pension. The state’s contribution to it: $13,994.
Then we get to the bonuses. Corrigan bagged a $64,421 performance bonus in 2012.
Moseley’s bonus last year: Zero. Washington state does not pay bonuses to its ferry executives.
Let’s throw in Corrigan’s $8,477 vehicle allowance, shall we? Moseley’s vehicle allowance: zero. He pays for his own car.
In total, Corrigan’s $544,000 compensation package vastly exceeds Moseley’s, even though the Washington ferry system carried two million more passengers and three million more vehicles than B.C. Ferries last year.
Man, are we getting hosed. And the comparisons just get worse from there.
Consider that B.C. Ferries’ other two senior executives are also making nearly half a million bucks each and last year bagged six-figure bonuses.
B.C. Ferries vice-president Robert Clarke banked $492,207 last year, including a $133,711 bonus. Vice-president Glen Schwartz made $491,643, including a $127,008 bonus.
In Washington state, the two most-senior executives reporting to Moseley are the deputy chiefs of finance and operations. They each make $131,821. No bonuses, of course.
Diving deeper into the B.C. Ferries gravy boat, you reach another lucrative pool of riches called the board of directors.
Donald Hayes, the president and principal owner of a large forestry company, is paid $100,000 to be the part-time chairman of the B.C. Ferries board.
The board has eight part-time directors, making an average of $42,000 each, an annual income for many people. The highest-paid director is Vancouver lawyer Geoff Plant, a former Liberal MLA, who received $51,278 last year.
How much do they pay the board of directors at Washington State Ferries? Nothing. They don’t have a board of directors. The company reports directly to the governor.
And that’s another huge difference between the two ferry systems: government control.
In Washington state, the head of the ferry system is responsible to the governor and the state legislature, which sets the service’s annual budget. In British Columbia, the government has turned B.C. Ferries into a quasi-private corporation that operates independently, even through the government subsidizes its operations and still technically owns it.
That’s why we now have the pathetic spectacle of the transportation minister publicly pleading with B.C. Ferries to stop its executive feeding frenzy, and the ferry corporation telling him to pound sand.
The salaries, bonuses, two-at-a-time pensions and gold-plated benefits are all “serving the interests of the company extremely well,” chairman Hayes told an annual B.C. Ferries public meeting on Friday.
Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he? Would you want to kill the golden goose if it was laying eggs in your backyard?
This is an abuse of B.C. taxpayers, not to mention B.C. Ferries customers, already slammed with stratospheric fare hikes that have driven passenger numbers down drastically.
Those same B.C. Ferries passengers are now threatened with $26 million in service cuts because the company is pursuing a “costcontainment strategy” at the same time they line their own pockets with obscene raises and bonuses.
Transportation Minister Todd Stone said the B.C. Ferries featherbedding sends “the wrong message” to the public and he intends to talk to them about it. But that was over a week ago and he still hasn’t got around to it.
“They’ll probably do nothing and just hope the public forgets all about it,” said NDP critic Harry Bains.
He’s probably right. That exact strategy has been working for the Liberals for years.
Getting back to Washington state: The fares are a lot cheaper down there, too.
The current round-trip fare for a car and driver between Tsawwassen and Swartz Bay — the busiest route in the B.C. Ferries system — is $133.50.
The busiest route in the Washington state system — with over six million passengers a year — is between Seattle and Bainbridge Island. The return fare: $34.42.
Yes, it’s a shorter run. But check the websites of two ferry systems and you’ll see the fares in Washington state seem to be lower right across the board.
Gee, I wonder why?