Behind the Scenes: Dave Frohnmayer's Salary

https://www.oregonlive.com/steveduin/2008/12/behind_the_scenes_dave_frohnma.html "Daily Emerald UO President Dave Frohnmayer In the essay -- titled "Misplaced priorities? Follow the money" -- Harbaugh hit on some familiar themes, noting that while many things are in decline at UO, the compensation package of university President Dave Frohnmayer is not. If money is tight in the Oregon University System, Harbaugh wrote, the OUS Board "has somehow found the cash to increase UO President Frohnmayer's pay by 325 percent." He pegged Frohnmayer's total compensation at $717,000 ... ...And that prompted a revealing response from Ryan Hagemann, secretary of the State Board of Higher Ed. Hagemann wrote to The Oregonian, arguing that Harbaugh's numbers were wrong. He argued that Frohnmayer received a state salary of $245,700 and additional compensation from the UO Foundation of $199,260, putting his annual pay at $444,960. "As such," Hagemann's letter states, "Mr. Frohnmayer's total state and privately funded annual pre-tax salary combined is $444,960, not the inflated number of $700,000 as cited by Mr. Harbaugh. lf Oregonians are interested in comparing university presidents nationwide, The Chronicle of Higher Education completes an annual survey which is available on their website." As a result, the Op-Ed editor, Galen Barnett, asked Harbaugh if he could reconcile his numbers or if the paper needed to run a correction. Harbaugh copied me on the subsequent exchange of e-mails, in which he makes a persuasive case that "OUS is blowing smoke for Dave Frohnmayer, and they are doing it on the taxpayer's dime." Harbaugh and Hagemann agree that The Chronicle of Higher Education is the authoritative source on compensation packages. At Chronicle.com, we read, "Total-compensation figures include salary and benefits from institutional and private sources, annualized amounts of deferred compensation, and the amount of bonuses for which chief executives qualified during the fiscal year." An accurate figure should also include "housing and car allowances." Chronicle.com also considers the use of a university- or state-owned home, club dues and expense accounts part of compensation, but it doesn't include dollar amounts for those benefits in its final calculation. You'll notice I bold-faced "deferred compensation." Harbaugh counts it. Hagemann, curiously, doesn't. Here's the breakdown of Frohnmayer's compensation, according to Harbaugh: From OUS data: Salary from public funds .................. $245,700 Salary from UO Foundation ............... $199,260 Deferred comp from UO Foundation ... $150,000 Estimated pending OUS input: Estimate of PERS contribution from public funds .... $34,398 Value of house .....................................................$60,000 Value of car allowance from public funds .................$12,000 Total Compensation by Chronicle.com definition: $701,358 Extra income from outside work as Umpqua Bank Director $41,500 Total earnings: $742,858 Harbaugh only has estimates to work with on parts of Frohnmayer's compensation package because, he argues, OUS is particularly uncooperative in complying with his appeals for information that's part of the public record. To cite just one example, Harbaugh said it took six months for him to obtain the invoice showing that OUS spent $45,500 on a 10-page consultant report "surveying the compensation for certain college presidents, which OUS obtained to determine the appropriate compensation for its presidents." That last quote, by the way, is from deputy AG Peter Shepherd. Harbaugh was forced to appeal to the AG's office when Hagemann redacted the names of numerous presidents and institutions when he turned that report over to Harbaugh. Last January, Shepherd granted Harbaugh's request for an unredacted copy of the $45,500 report ... which, Harbaugh writes, "was entirely cribbed from public data available for free from Chronicle.com (free for subscribers, and OUS is a subscriber)." "In summary," Harbaugh writes to The Oregonian, "I did the best I could to provide accurate numbers. The OUS has done everything possible to hide these numbers from me, and is now attempting to fool you. President Frohnmayer should give back $200,00 to UO." I'm much more annoyed by the lack of transparency at the University of Oregon than I am by Frohnmayer's total compensation package. But Harbaugh does provide us with links to stories about several other college presidents -- at Washington State University , the University of Florida , the University of Louisville and the University of Connecticut -- who have decided that returning salary to their school or rejecting a bonus is the right thing to do. If you purchase a product or register for an account through one of the links on our site, we may receive compensation. "