“The cemeteries of the world are full of indispensable men.”
— Charles de Gaulle
Almost from the moment Cal Marsella walked into the offices of the Regional Transportation District as its new general manager in 1995, we began hearing how indispensable he was. A salary of $108,000 was naturally an insult for a man of Marsella’s talents, although why he accepted the figure to begin with was never entirely clear. But supporters on the board moved quickly to spare him the trauma of earning less than some of his industry brethren.
Marsella’s first salary hike, after year one, clocked in at a healthy $11,520. Yet that was just the appetizer for the feast that would follow. By the time he retired last year, Marsella had nearly tripled his base pay to $295,300.
Inevitably, that too wasn’t enough for this indispensable man, who from time to time would let people know that other transit agencies were interested in his services. If Marsella was going to make what he truly deserved, a good deal of it would apparently have to be hidden from the ungrateful carping of a press and public that simply wouldn’t understand his worth.
And so he and his lackeys on the board struck a sleazy deal in 2001 to allow the general manager to accrue 2 1/2 years of pension for every year he worked. Now that’s more like it.
The lump-sum pension value upon his departure: $2.9 million, paid out last month.
I certainly didn’t see it coming. Although I’d grown weary long ago of hearing how Marsella’s generous raises were only meant to keep him abreast of his peers — in fact, as the state auditor noted in a recent report, Marsella’s compensation was comfortably higher than most — it never occurred to me that he might be so devious at deferring salary.
Incredibly, however, the indispensable man is still not fully appeased. Last week he was at it once again, suggesting that he had worked virtually for peanuts given all he’d achieved.
When asked if he would return part of the pension, as indignant lawmakers are foolishly urging, Marsella compared himself to high-priced coaches who “make multiples of what I made and don’t even have winning seasons.” Our gilded retiree — he’s ours, folks; we paid for this — seems to be under the impression that his tenure at RTD ended in triumph, when in fact he presided over one of the worst public-works debacles in the history of the state.
Marsella didn’t merely lowball the tax necessary to build FasTracks. He was off by 100 percent — and even RTD now acknowledges that it wasn’t just because of uncontrollable factors such as ballooning construction costs. As a result of Marsella’s mismanagement, we are saddled with a train system that for decades will drain off a huge proportion of the transportation dollars spent in this region while accounting for only a tiny fraction of total trips.
Marsella’s sense of entitlement is hardly unique, alas. You will hear the same story on occasion about the indispensable CEO. This is the fellow who must not only be paid more each month than the average American makes in 20 years, but be reimbursed for lawn and maid service, travel, tax preparation and investment counseling, just to mention a few of the perks that a certain type of ego needs to feel that his place in the world is secure.
“We had an excellent run,” Marsella told The Post’s Jeffrey Leib.
Well, someone most certainly did.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
