At a time executive compensation and bonuses are dominating the headlines, RTD board members this week rejected General Manager Cal Marsella’s request to defer a salary increase and performance bonus.
Marsella’s base salary at the Regional Transportation District was $290,286 last year and his contract calls for an annual salary increase based on a review of compensation packages paid to leaders of transit agencies in five major cities.
Based on that review, Marsella was eligible for a 4.87 percent salary increase, totaling $14,137, at the start of this year, according to RTD.
He also was eligible to earn a bonus of 12.5 percent — worth $36,286 this year — after meeting five performance measures in 2008.
On Tuesday, a committee of RTD’s board rejected Marsella’s request to defer, until next year, payment of the salary increase and performance bonus.
RTD director Noel Busck said the group decided to pay the salary increase and bonus this year “because we wanted to be transparent.”
“We have a contract with Mr. Marsella just like we have a union contract,” Busck said, adding that deferring the increase and bonus “would not help the budget substantially.”
Some say Marsella’s compensation package is excessive at a time the agency — facing a budget shortfall — has frozen salaries for other managers and is proposing to link possible raises for unionized bus and rail operators and mechanics to a restoration of sales-tax revenue growth.
For all of this year, agency officials predict sales tax revenues will be down 4.4 percent from 2008’s level.
“Why are government-sponsored entities allowed to enter into contracts with chief executives that offer bonuses for job performance using taxpayer money?” said Sen. Lois Tochtrop, D-Thornton. “Maybe the General Assembly needs to look into this.”
Tochtrop requested and received from RTD a detailed accounting of Marsella’s compensation package.
Marsella, 58, who has headed RTD since 1995, defends his management contract.
Under his leadership, the agency has twice been named “transit agency of the year” by a national transit group and, until now, has delivered light rail lines on time and on budget.
“There are those that believe public sector managers do not deserve market-level compensation,” Marsella said. “I do not subscribe to that.”
In addition to base salary, the annual salary increase based on the survey of counterpart compensation at five other transit agencies and the performance bonus, elements of Marsella’s contract with RTD include:
* Pension credits equal to two and a half years of service for each year worked, retroactive to 1995. It means that Marsella, with 14 years of service, has earned 35 years of pension credit.
* Annual payments by RTD averaging about $20,000 a year from 2005 through this year into Marsella’s deferred compensation program.
* The right, since 2005, to six weeks of vacation annually. Unused amounts may be carried over year to year and upon retirement or termination, Marsella can cash out 100 percent of the accrued time. He currently has 1,010 hours of vacation accrued.
* A similar right to carry over accrued sick leave year to year and cash it out upon leaving RTD. Marsella has 939 hours of accrued sick leave.
“I don’t take much vacation and I rarely if ever take sick time,” he said, explaining the sizable amount of banked time.
Marsella said he has been recruited for chief executive positions at other top transit agencies that pay similar compensation or more and “I’ve chosen to stay.”
“This is a market-based determination,” he said of his RTD package.
Former RTD board member and chairman Jack McCroskey, a long-time Marsella critic, sees it differently.
“This is a matrix of greed and duplicity,” said McCroskey, who has used public comment periods at recent RTD board meetings to criticize Marsella’s compensation and urge RTD directors to review its terms.
“You have a board of directors which unfortunately is under his thumb,” McCroskey said.
Jeffrey Leib: 303-954-1645 or jleib@denverpost.com
