MTA releases CEO’s $461K salary

PALMER — Matanuska Telephone Association members retained the current board of directors at the cooperative’s annual meeting June 13 and also got the first full accounting of how much MTA’s chief executive officer is paid.

At last year’s annual meeting, members voted to make CEO Greg Berberich’s salary public at this year’s meeting.

In an announcement dated May 25, board secretary Catherine Fosselman released Berberich’s compensation at $461,408.

Her announcement broke that down further — $250,000 is Berberich’s base salary. The rest is bonuses and benefits.

“Additionally, the CEO works under an employment contract with the board of directors of MTA, which specifies certain other benefits, including use of a vehicle, executive life insurance and product line services such as telephone, (Internet service) and (cable television),” Fosselman wrote.

Fosselman, writing for the board, says that MTA employed a national firm to gauge the fairness of that salary. The firm puts Berberich in the “fair” range of salaries for CEOs of similarly sized companies.

“We feel the compensation amount which we have approved generally falls within the ‘fair’ range; however, recognize that it is comparatively low for an individual with the current CEO’s 35 years of tenure and industry experience, 12 of which is at the CEO level,” according to the announcement.

Other large Valley organizations that have taken heat for the amount they pay their executives include Matanuska Electric Association under Wayne Carmony and Mat-Su Borough School District under the late Ken Burnley. Carmony made approximately $220,000 in 2007. Burnley drew a salary of $180,000.

As for MTA’s election — incumbent Larry Wiget took the most votes with 2,736 members endorsing his continued service. Wiget’s vote totals earned him a three-year term. Incumbent Earl Lackey took in 2,653 votes, and thus won a two-year term.

The third candidate in the race, Adelane Kelly, took 1,289 votes — less than half of Lackey’s total.

The overwhelming majority of votes favored all three changes to MTA’s bylaws. The changes clarified the audit information provided at yearly meetings, changed the way members were recorded as present at the meeting and raised the bar for changes to MTA bylaws.

An MTA press release states that 400 people showed up at the meeting at which the vote totals were announced.

Berberich’s speech to the assembled crowd was posted to the company’s website. In it, Berberich, who has been MTA’s CEO for 12 years, noted that during the last 10 years the co-op has reduced its long-term debt by 42 percent.

More recently, the company rolled out iPhone service and covered local events on its digital television channels. It is a company with a $27 million payroll and 350 employees.

But Berberich took a good portion of his speech talking about changes in federal regulations that could hit MTA very hard. The government is changing the way it pays to support rural telecommunications. MTA gets 40 percent of its income from those programs.

“MTA has spent the last 59 years making investments in rural areas to bring our members service, to meet our carrier of last resort obligations and to deliver the universal service mandated by the Telecommunications Act. We have made those investments in good faith under a social contract and understanding that the support would be there,” Berberich said.

The company is committed to fighting the proposed changes, he said.

Contact reporter Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.