He may have been trying to wear a white hat, but instead Regional Transportation District director Cal Marsella ended up shooting himself in the foot.
RTD’s longtime general manager this week asked his board of directors to defer a salary increase and hefty bonus owed to him under the terms of his contract.
In light of the controversy surrounding AIG’s bonuses, it appeared as if the gesture was meant to create goodwill during troubled economic times. But if Marsella, whose 2008 base salary was $290,286, had asked that the raise and bonus be canceled rather than just deferred to next year, the gesture would have been far more meaningful.
RTD is worried about sales-tax revenue shrinking 4.4 percent from 2008. The agency has frozen salaries for other managers, and hopes to tie raises for unionized drivers and mechanics to a restoration of sales-tax-revenue growth, according to The Post’s Jeffrey Leib.
While it sounded good at first, Marsella’s was an empty gesture. Deferring the more than $50,000 raise and bonus merely delays payment for a future date.
RTD’s board, as strange as it sounds, rightly denied his request. Delaying the payments would only give a false impression of saving money.
Late this afternoon, after being questioned by The Post, Marsella decided to ask the RTD board to cut his bonus and salary hike by 3 percent — the same cut required of FasTracks contractors.
It’s an appreciated, face-saving move, but much of the damage already may be done. Aside from sending the wrong signal to employees, Marsella’s moves have given potential opponents useful fodder for attack ads as RTD mulls another tax hike for rail projects.
RTD and area mayors are weighing whether to ask voters to add another 0.4 percent regional sales tax to cover FasTracks’ rising price tag.
His $50,000 increase — a 4.87 percent raise and a 12.5 percent bonus — pales when compared to the overall costs, especially if 3 percent is deducted, but still, we can imagine the attack ads already.
“I just don’t think that relinquishing that part of my contract would be fair,” Marsella told us, adding that his salary is in line with other large public transportation system managers.
Fair enough.
But if that’s the bottom line, Marsella would have been better served to simply accept this year’s raise and bonus and not attract the negative attention with his original smoke-and-mirrors request.
