It’s outrageous!
His organization is $2.5 billion in the hole and he wants to cut 1/6 of their services and raise prices order to get them back in the black — yet over the last two years he received a 40% salary increase and a plump six-figure “performance bonus” in 2008.
Disgraceful! Somebody should do something! There ought to be a law!
Except ..
He is John E. Potter, Postmaster General of the United States.
Postmaster General John E. Potter recently warned that economic times are so dire that the U.S. Postal Service may end mail delivery one day a week and freeze executive salaries. But his personal fortunes are nonetheless rising thanks to 40 percent in pay raises since 2006, a $135,000 bonus last year and several perks usually reserved for corporate CEOs.
The changes, approved by the Postal Board of Governors and contained in a little-noticed regulatory filing in December, brought Mr. Potter’s total compensation and retirement benefits to more than $800,000 in 2008. That is more than double the salary for President Obama.
The new compensation package, much of it deferred to later years, goes beyond a newly beefed-up salary, now $263,575, that Congress arranged for him as part of a 2006 law to make top postal salaries more competitive with those in the private sector. At least four other postal officials got more than a quarter-million dollars in total compensation in 2008, according to Postal Service records reviewed by The Washington Times.
Lawmakers, already trying to limit compensation of Wall Street executives, have taken notice of Mr. Potter’s good fortune when the Postal Service is posting nearly $3 billion a year in losses and now wants to raise the price of a stamp by 2 cents.
The House Oversight and Government Reform federal workforce, Postal Service and the District of Columbia subcommittee “will investigate during this Congress,” said Marcus A. Williams, a spokesman for the panel that oversees the Postal Service.
Yes, an “investigation” to be sure, but I’m not holding my breath waiting for anything else to be done … except for those postage rate hikes to which we have lately become so accustomed.
