The Scoop: Lottery employees have struck it rich
Rebecca Paul doesn’t have to wait in line to buy a ticket. Tennessee’s new lottery chief has already hit the jackpot.
In Paul’s brief time on the job, her vast salary has commanded more attention than anything she has done related to the state’s lottery in progress. That’s because Paul can earn $750,000 a year in salary and bonuses, which tramples the salary of every other government employee in the state.
In fact, I can’t think of any government employee in the country who earns more money than Paul. The president of the United States only makes $400,000 a year for goodness sake.
Tennessee lawmakers have decided, for whatever reason, to grossly overpay our lottery chief. As a taxpayer in this cash-strapped state, that concerns me.
It concerns me when our government pays a person to run a gambling operation about 20 times more than it’s willing to pay teachers. I never realized gambling was such a priority.
Equally disturbing is the fact Paul thinks there’s a cornucopia of money to go around. She’s already hired three top aides – at $180,000 a pop – and promised them yet-unspecified bonuses to accompany their extravagant salaries.
That behavior prompted Gov. Phil Bredesen to lash out at Paul. Bredesen told her “enough is enough.” He wants her to quit putting so many zeroes in the salaries of her new employees and get on with building a lottery.
Naturally, Paul has defended her own salary by saying she doesn’t deserve to be paid like a state employee. She deserves to be paid like a CEO of a major company.
This is an analogy I think just about every one of us would like. I know I sure wish I could be paid like a CEO of a major company instead of paid like an editor of a tri-weekly newspaper.
However, I am proud to say I am an editor of a tri-weekly newspaper, just like Rebecca Paul is a state employee. She is not the CEO of Coca-Cola, UPS, or Delta Airlines, although she singled out those companies in her comparison. Since she brought it up, I say lets take a look at those numbers.
The CEO of Coca-Cola makes around $5.7 million a year. That’s pretty good work if you can get it. For that $5.7 million, Coca-Cola’s CEO oversees 56,000 employees around the globe and the company earns close to $20 billion in revenue each year.
What about UPS? Glad you asked. UPS has a massive workforce of 360,000 people in over 200 countries and had $31 billion in revenue last year. Its CEO makes around $2.5 million annually.
Last but not least is Delta Airlines, which operates in 46 U.S. states and 31 foreign countries. Delta employs 75,100 and creates over $13 billion in revenue. For making the skies a friendly place to fly, Delta’s CEO earns $6.4 million.
And now for the nuts and bolts of the Tennessee lottery (drum roll please). The Tennessee state lottery will have about 300 employees in a grand total of one state. If everything goes as planned, the lottery might earn $1 billion in revenue its first full year of operation.
Paul’s comparison just doesn’t measure up and Tennessee citizens sure don’t have to sit around and scratch our heads if it seems our tax dollars aren’t stretched far enough. First, we hand over an open checkbook so the president of UT can furnish his mansion with thousand-dollar oriental rugs – even a $700 mailbox. Now that Shumaker has been shown the door, it’s Paul who has been given the magic pen to that checkbook.
Even state Republicans have noticed the skyrocketing lottery salaries. Earlier this week, Tennessee Republican Party Chairwoman Beth Harwell said, “We are receiving a lot of feedback from Tennesseans across the state who are deeply disturbed by these huge salaries being given out before the first lottery ticket is sold. I think most Tennesseans will agree, the lottery should be for education, not to enrich bureaucrats.”
Harwell’s statement couldn’t be more accurate. A lottery that’s supposed to line the pockets of college-bound students is doing an admirable job of lining the pockets of its hierarchy.
(James Clark is editor of the Standard. He can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)