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ASPA CEO comments on criticism of his $150K salary

“Utilities, as with other professional organizations, remunerate the executive directors or CEOs based on the profession and the market,” says ASPA CEO Utu Abe Malae in response to Samoa News queries following Senator Tuaolo Manaia Fruean voicing his disappointment and stating that he was “disgusted” with the high salaries of the Semi Autonomous Authorities Chief Executive Officers.

 

Tuaolo made a comparison of the Authorities CEO’s salaries to the paychecks of the Fono leaders (Senate President/House Speaker) and the Executive leaders (Governor and Lt Governor).

 

As reported earlier this month, Tuaolo pointed out that the ASPA CEO makes $150,000 yet the Senate president makes $30,000, and he called that “insulting” and “embarrassing”.

 

Utu stated that the profession establishes the minimum skill set required for the job. The market value relates to the difficulty of attracting someone for the position.

 

“To get an idea of the appropriate pay a board would study, say, the Salary Survey of the American Public Power Association — these are "local publicly owned electric utilities", not investor owned ones. (The electric utilities of American Samoa, CNMI and Guam are members of APPA). The board must decide where to place the pay–first quartile, median, or third quartile for example.

 

The median for a utility the size of ASPA is: $177,477 or $180,001 based on revenue and customers respectively (2015 Survey).” He pointed out that the survey does not consider the pay of politicians or other positions not relevant to the market for managers of utilities. Of course, the board has the choice of lowering or raising the bar. This decision applies to all authorities, not just the utility.