Today’s NJ has a long story on the salary of the President of DelTech — Lonnie George. It’s a long article, but worth the read. George is not only the state’s top earner, but apparently at the top of the salary list for community college presidents nationwide.
I’m not so interested in whether or not he is overpaid (I think he is) but more in what the heck the Board of Trustees was thinking? All too often these kinds of Boards can become enablers of the Indispensable Man theory — convincing themselves that whatever performance they are seeing demands some extraordinary compensation. And this being Delaware, the instincts to take care of “one of our own” are awfully strong. Because most of them will be in a position to reciprocate at some time or another. But that doesn’t take away from my larger point that there is Board of Trustees here who have apparently lost sight of the ball on this, so it seems fair to wonder what else they are basically rubber stamping to the overall detriment of the system?
It doesn’t matter where the funds come from to pay George — there are habits of responsbility that ought to be on display here that are Not. But as we recently learned, state employees are certainly asked to live with the burden of reduced revenues and some of those employees are persistently underpaid for crucial jobs. Yet here we find someone paid by taxpayers who is making well over his competitive worth and does so with the approval of some of the same folks making decisions on underpaying other state employees. You definitely need to be able to entice good leadership to positions like the President of Del Tech, which means a competitive salary and bennies are on order. But there is no way to talk about the current situation as competitive. It seems time to review this Board of Trustees and make some changes there to get them to reorient their thinking.