Maine’s hospitals: Big jobs, big pay (Courtesy of taxpayers)

Bangor Daily news ^ | Meg Haskell

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Cost-cutting puts pressure on some CEO salaries, but packages can top $1 million

With Maine’s economy spiraling downward and unemployment spiraling up, even hospitals — typically the cornerstones of employment security — are feeling the pain.

In response to declining revenues, hospitals large and small have announced cost-trimming measures ranging from canceling magazine subscriptions and curtailing travel expenses to eliminating nonessential health services and even laying off staff.

In this atmosphere, the issue of executive compensation can be a touchy one, especially considering that all but one of Maine’s hospitals are nonprofit institutions, accountable to the communities they serve and not to investors.

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Chief executive officers at Maine’s private, nonprofit hospitals earn healthy salaries and significant contributions toward their retirement accounts. In 2006, Maine’s smallest hospital, the 14-bed Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital in Greenville, paid CEO Eugene Murray a salary of $142,452, along with $24,752 in the form of contributions to his benefit plan and retirement account. At the other end of the spectrum, CEO Vince Conti at the 606-bed Maine Medical Center in Portland was paid a salary of $1,167,868 that year, and benefits valued at $259,163

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In between are three dozen hospital CEOs earning six-figure salaries and comfortable benefit packages. Not counting the top executives at four small Maine hospitals that contract with the private Tennessee-based company Quorum Health Services for their administrators, the CEOs pull down a tidy total of at least $13,774,790 — almost certainly more now, since the federal tax information used in the chart is as much as two years old.

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In addition to their salaries and benefits, which are a matter of public record, nonprofit hospital CEOs also enjoy a number of other perks and amenities that typically are not reported. A 2006 U.S. Government Accountability Office survey of 100 hospital systems across the country found that personal vehicle expenses, access to sporting events and other entertainment, financial planning and annual tax preparation, travel expenses for a spouse and membership in recreational and social clubs are often included in the executive compensation package.

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What they fail to mention is that many of them are paid for by taxpayers. It didn't occur to them that its because of the loss of jobs and our tax base that this is happening.

Also we have government workers taking the biggest slice of the pie. TAXATIONLAND: THE WAY COMMUNISM SHOULD BE