On September 17, 2020 at the Idaho Freedom Foundation there is an article by Fred Birnbaum titled BSU’s Tromp should lead by example, cut
her own pay and benefits. Fred was whining about how the Boise State University
president had announced a plan to cut pay of athletic department employees who
earn more than $40,00 per year. He said her plan also should spark a larger
discussion about leadership and priorities in BSU’s funding. Then he said:
“Consider for a moment that the person slashing pay for BSU workers
– Tromp – brings home a hefty paycheck each year. Her cuts might not inflict
much pain on football coach Brian Harsin’s pocketbook, but they will do
significant damage to lower-paid staffers who make less each year than Tromp
receives from BSU just to pay for her housing. According to her contract, Tromp
earns an annual salary of $425,000, plus a $60,000 housing allowance and a
$9,200 car allowance. Will she cut her own lavish pay and perks to show
solidarity with the working men and women of Boise State?”
Why is BSU important? As shown above, in 2019 Boise State
University had the largest enrollment of any state university in Idaho. It is
bigger than the University of Idaho plus Idaho State. Only the LDS’s Brigham
Young University-Idaho (BYU-Idaho) has close to that enrollment.
I continued reading the article, expecting to find out that
Tromp had the highest salary, and a lower one for Coach Harsin. But Fred never bothered
to state any other salaries. (He did whine that BSU should cut out the
assistant to the vice president for equity initiatives). That got me thinking
this was more a rant about that BSU president who liberal politics he disliked
than a serious discussion of priorities. Sutton’s Law says to first consider
the obvious. It is named after bank robber Willie Sutton, who when asked why he
robbed banks, allegedly replied:
“because that’s where the money is.”
There is a state web site called Transparent Idaho that has tables listing the salaries of all state employees who are paid more than the
governor ($138,302). As shown above in a bar chart of the Top Ten, six members
of the BSU athletic department (orange) are there – so that’s where the money
is for a total of 3.7 million dollars. BSU football coach Brian Harsin has the
highest salary of $1,650,000, followed by basketball coach Leon Rice with
$725,000, and BSU president Marlene Tromp with $425,006. Next are the presidents
of the University of Idaho (U of I), C. Scott Green, at $419,994 and Idaho
State University (ISU), Kevin D. Satterlee, at $400,000. The only person in the
top ten not at a university is Robert N. Maynard, the chief investment officer
in the Public Employment Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI) whose salary of
$339,518 is seventh.
As shown above in another bar chart of the Top Twenty,
members of the BSU athletic department (orange) have 9 of the top 20 salaries,
while other BSU executives have just 4 more.
Still another bar chart shows the Top Forty, which adds just
another four BSU executives in the second twenty. So the total for BSU is 17 of
40, with 9 from athletics and 8 from other executives. That 17 is almost half
of the Top Forty. For perspective, the fortieth salary of $231,213 is 4.16
times the state median income of $55,583. Note that the salary for our state
epidemiologist, Christine G. Hahn, is only #36.
It is a legitimate question whether the BSU athletic
department (or all of BSU) should be paid that much. But Fred never asked it.
Many people enjoy watching university football and basketball, and might say
yes. I am not one of them, perhaps because I lived in Ann Arbor for seven years
and Columbus for nine. I got really tired of the local emphasis on Michigan and
Ohio State football, and the entitled attitude of those athletic departments.
Images of a football and basketball came from Wikimedia
Commons.
