MTA bonuses, transparency don’t pass muster

Perhaps people are just jealous that MTA’s CEO Greg Berberich doled out $1,000 bonuses to each of his 350 employees this past year.

But petty bitterness and jealousy aside, what really sticks in our craw is the fact that it was $350,000 of cooperative member owners’ money that was spent. And it doesn’t seem to be an isolated event. According to former MTA employees, MTA workers have received large holiday bonuses for years.

Cooperative members own the utility collectively. If our co-op has a good year, we expect to share equally in the windfall through lower-priced services and increases in capital credit rebates.

But, in fact, this past year’s contentious bonuses were more than 10 times the size of the capital credit rebates most members received. This year, those credits ranged from about $40 to a little more than $100 for each household, for a total of $2.7 million, Berberich said.

Berberich argues that employees deserve to be rewarded because they helped bring in $100 million in annual revenues for the company. But according to MTA’s website, the utility does not exist to make a profit. It exists to serve its members.

“We’ve done very well in a very highly competitive environment with some big players such as AT&T, GCI and ACS,” he said when asked about the bonuses.

Don’t misunderstand; we applaud employers that reward employees for good work. But this isn’t a private corporation. We own this company and its profits as co-op members.

Also troubling is MTA’s lack of transparency.

The public wouldn’t have known how MTA spent more than $350,000 of members’ money in the first place if the we hadn’t received a tip from a concerned co-op member.

Combine the secrecy and the bonuses and it just doesn’t pass muster for Matanuska Telephone Association Inc. to deny members basic information — such as the amount of Berberich’s salary — about how it spends our money.

“MTA is a cooperative and should be putting its money back into the pockets of its members,” said Rod Cottle, who has 10 years of experience serving on the board of another local co-op, Matanuska Electric Association.

Berberich confirmed that he authorized bonus payments, but declined to disclose the amount of the bonuses, saying it was a confidential personnel matter.

Should we worry that Berberich feels perfectly comfortable spending hundreds of thousands of dollars of members’ money, but doesn’t feel comfortable accounting to member owners about spending that money?

Next we called board director Kim Robinson. She had no comment.

Finally, board Director Chuck Foster verified the amount. He said Berberich sent board members an e-mail message informing them of the expenditure after the fact.

Foster, who said he considers himself a strong consumer advocate, said he was perturbed that Berberich made the decision unilaterally, with no input from the board of directors. He said, as he sees it, the root of the problem is the John Carver model of policy governance.

“Everyone has a right to know this stuff because it’s a cooperative,” Foster said, adding that Berberich himself takes in more than $500,000 a year when you total his salary, benefits and bonuses.

Foster was recently scolded by the board for making such statements to the media and resigned from the MTA board last Wednesday.

MTA’s 990 form filed with the IRS for 2007 reveals Berberich was paid nearly $360,000 and also received an additional $55,000 in “deferred compensation.” We can only assume his salary has gone up since then.

MTA’s Chief Governance Officer Earl Lackey also verified the $1,000 bonuses, but said he trusts Berberich and that he has the right to reward employees for their good work.

“We lock the CEO into certain parameters of profitability and equity,” Lackey said. “He knows he’d better have the bottom line where we tell him or he’s in trouble.”

Don’t get us wrong; we love the fact that companies show appreciation for employees by rewarding them at the end of the year for good work.

But ultimately, we think if the utility we own collectively is profitable, its member owners should be first to benefit through capital credit rebates or lower rates for service.