The $3.9 Million Retirement and a California Hospital

Yesterday the Los Angeles Times reported that California's State Assembly has decided to audit the Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare District, after the newspaper dug up the fact that its former CEO Samuel Downing was given a retirement package with nearly 4 million dollars in extra pension benefits last month.

There are more details in the article, but the splurge looks even more grandiose contrasted in this paragraph to the general financial situation of the hospital and its low-level employees:

Over the same period, the hospital faced declining revenues and patient admissions. About 600 staff positions have been eliminated through layoffs and attrition since January 2010, and the hospital has been locked in contentious negotiations with the unions that represent its workers. Union leaders have been especially critical of Downing’s pay.

In an evident example of either the simultaneous inhabitation of a parallel universe or a love of extravagantly polite fibs,

Hospital representatives defended their compensation policies at Wednesday’s Joint Legislative Audit Committee hearing but said they welcomed the scrutiny.

This scrutiny will presumably be concluded and the findings made public by 2012.

Whether these sums of money are really obscene I don't know and it is not reasonable or right to seize the pitchfork too gleefully ("there but for the grace of God go I," etc.).

In any case the apparent mentality of the hospital administration does remind me of the time when Canada's parliament voted on its own salaries, after a debate of some acrimony, and predictably raised them. (The bill also said that anyone who didn't vote for it would go without, which seemed very petty to me, but that's a side detail.)

"Pensions: State to audit Salinas hospital that gave CEO nearly $4 million in retirement benefits" [Los Angeles Times], by Sam Allen (May 11, 2011)