What is it with public authorities awarding handsome, if not extravagant, bonuses in these coronavirus pandemic times?
You’ll recall that Airport Authority CEO Christina Cassotis was paid a whopping $164,250 bonus in January for her work in 2019.
Not only were the optics bad – in a time of struggles for so many businesses and employees precipitated by arbitrary and capricious government edicts – the bonus was awarded for a year of several high-profile failures, i.e. paying airlines to fly in and out of Pittsburgh International Airport.
A few of those airlines quickly went belly-up. Such a failure of due diligence certainly was not worthy of a bonus.
At least the Airport Authority, citing the pandemic, had the common sense to not award Cassotis a bonus for 2020. But still.
And now word comes that another authority boss – the Port Authority of Allegheny County’s Katharine Kelleman – will be paid a bonus of $21,908.
More bad optics, indeed, for many of the same reasons noted above. But it’s also a bonus being paid as the mass-transit agency’s ridership tanked because of the pandemic by 80 percent. It remains 60 percent below year-ago levels.
Now, there’s little relationship between the pandemic-induced decline and Kelleman’s stewardship. But, still, what a poor message to send at a time when taxpayers have bailed out the authority.
If anything, Kelleman and Cassotis, already quite handsomely compensated for their positions at $230,000 and $410,220, respectively, should have sent a positive message and declined such bonuses.
That they did not more than suggests a public-be-damned attitude that disserves sound public policy.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
