MTA members vote to make CEO costs public

PALMER — Nearly 3,000 Matanuska Telephone Association members said they want to know how much the cooperative’s chief executive officer cost the company, overruling the board of directors’ argument it was privileged information that should be protected.

Before and during MTA’s annual meeting Wednesday at the Alaska State Fairgrounds, members were asked to pick two of three director candidates to fill seats on the board and vote on three bylaw amendments.

Board incumbents Catherine Fosselman and Al Strawn were chosen to keep their seats, while newcomer Paul Farnsworth managed to capture about 1,000 less votes than each of them.

All three bylaw amendments — including one mandating the board secretary to disclose to members each year the total cost of MTA’s CEO — passed overwhelmingly.

Board Director Al Strawn said Thursday he was taken by surprise with the results of Proposal No. 3, which was placed on the ballot by former director Chuck Foster after he’d collected petition signatures from nearly 100 members. Foster has argued for the past several months that members have a right to know the CEO’s annual salary, bonuses, benefits and other perks because they owned the company.

“I misread what the members would do,” Strawn said. “I thought the membership would rely more on the recommendation of the board of directors, but in hindsight I think that information needed to be made public and I think it wasn’t a bad thing. I really trust the judgment of the membership on that issue.”

The board had voted earlier this month to go ahead and release to the Frontiersman CEO Greg Berberich’s annual salary of $250,000 and performance bonus of $110,000 in the hopes it would alleviate any unnecessary distractions during the annual meeting. After the Frontiersman ran a story June 3 about the newly released information, however, Foster submitted a letter to the Frontiersman outlining additional costs associated with Berberich.

“I applaud the Frontiersman for being tenacious in gathering information about our local telephone cooperative MTA,” Foster wrote in his June 3 letter. “However, I need to point out a few facts that I feel were not referenced in the MTA press release of June 2, 2011. There might be what you call a bit of ‘spin’ in this press release.”

Foster said an estimated $30,000 is spent on the CEO’s “Key Man Plan” and another $170,000 is spent on his benefits package this year. Total cost per year to members comes to more than $560,000, Foster argues.

“This equates to $2,150 per work day or $269 per hour,” Foster wrote. “I suspect MTA’s CEO is the highest paid executive in the Valley.”

Foster pointed out that those figures did not include his free company vehicle, fuel and maintenance; free cable TV; free cellphone or free Internet service.

Berberich could not be reached Thursday to comment on the election results.

The issue of how much Berberich cost the cooperative came to a head after the Frontiersman learned in January Berberich had given each of MTA’s 350 employees $1,000 holiday bonuses, yet would not disclose how much he was being paid and how much his own bonus was.

The board had previously argued that because MTA is competing with other local communications companies, the CEO’s salary and bonuses should not be disclosed because it would give those competitors too much inside knowledge about operations.

But given the chance to vote on the issue of whether members should be aware of those figures, 2,960 voted for the bylaw amendment requiring the information to be reported to members while 786 voted against the proposal.

Members also voted 2,869 to 870 to give the board additional time to determine board candidates and prepare ballots, and 3,202 to 534 to require capital credits for all MTA-Family services.

Fosselman received 2,781 votes for a three-year term and Strawn captured 2,499 votes for a two-year term. Farnsworth failed to win a seat after garnering 1,571 votes.

About 600 people attended the annual meeting and banquet, which was catered by Alaska Job Corps Culinary Arts students. Mad Science of Alaska entertained participants with demonstrations and hands-on activities. MTA spokesperson and Iditarod champion Martin Buser brought his canine companions and the latest MTA products were on display, according to an MTA press release.

“It was a good meeting,” Strawn said. “Greg did a wonderful job on his CEO report. It was very informative.”

Foster could not be reached for comment Thursday.

MTA was founded in 1953 to bring telephone service to rural Southcentral Alaska. The service area covers more than 100,000 square miles and spans from Eagle River to Clear Air Force Base.

Contact K.T. McKee at kate.mckee@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.