https://www.adn.com/opinions/2017/09/12/wake-up-native-health-consortium-execs-pay-doesnt-square-with-care/
WAKE UP, NATIVE HEALTH CONSORTIUM EXECUTIVES: EXECS' PAY DOESN'T SQUARE WITH CARE Opinion by Elise Patkotak
A story in Sunday's paper described a lawsuit filed by the Southcentral Foundation against the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium over compensation paid some board members and its chairman. The amounts seem extremely high given they are within a system that is chronically stretched to its financial limits in trying to provide health care to Natives throughout the state. The compensation for the chairman in particular looks questionable given that the gentleman apparently is working two full-time jobs at once. Both jobs are very demanding and that leads to some legitimate questions about how anyone can claim to be working over 80 hours a week for years without total burnout.
Native health care funding from the federal government contains no guarantee of any specific level. The law governing Native health care doesn't delineate a bottom line of services that must be funded. Each year is a battle to get enough money to continue what was being done the year before or to restart a program that had to be eliminated due to funding cuts. So when the headlines hit the paper that the chairman of the Native health consortium receives over $1 million in compensation, it is definitely going to rub some people the wrong way.
Whether or not the settlement with the federal government was only to make up for underpayments to administrative personnel does not matter as much as the perception that once again some people at the top get a lot of money while the people at the bottom still suffer from minimal access to health care.
We see this problem playing out in the Native community with some frequency. Every year, one or more for-profit Native corporations find themselves embattled because of a shareholder uprising over board and executive compensation. When you are still using honey buckets in your home, it's hard to accept that the head of your corporation should be making over a million dollars a year. The salary may be justified based on market conditions and compensation for similar executives, but that is not a concept that sells well in a village where the heating bill is over $1,000 a month and jobs are scarce.
It always surprises me that so many large organizations in this state can be so tone deaf to how their actions will play out among their shareholders. Native corporations sometimes seem most vulnerable to this affliction. Paying huge salaries to executives may work at Apple or Amazon, but Native corporations are way too close to their shareholders to get away with this without questions being raised and shareholders being angry. Maybe the executives at these corporations truly deserve that level of compensation, but it should be fairly obvious to even the most casual observer that this is going to raise red flags with shareholders who are trying to survive on subsistence in a moneyed economy.
When it comes to the health care system, this public relations problem becomes even more glaringly obvious. While there may be a very sound and logical argument for the compensation paid to the board and executives at the health consortium, that is simply not going to matter to the villagers being told there is no money to bring them to Anchorage for needed medical treatment.
Recent money received by the consortium may have been specifically appropriated to compensate for years of administrative underpayment. Try telling that to someone who wonders why an executive in Anchorage makes over $1 million while they wait for a dental aide to visit their village to take care of their toothache.
Quite frankly, looking in on this from the outside, one does have to ask how anyone manages two full-time jobs without one of them suffering from lack of attention. According to the documents filed, the chairman of the health consortium board claims he has been doing just that for a number of years. It certainly looks questionable and honestly doesn't easily pass the smell test.
Alaska Natives have done wonders in improving their health care system over the past four decades. Headlines like this only undermine their mission. And the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has no one to blame but itself for not getting out ahead of what they had to know would be a major PR problem if made public. Sometimes, it's not so much about whether you are right or wrong as it is about how you are perceived. And right now, the health consortium has got a real perception problem.
Elise Sereni Patkotak is the author of two memoirs about her life in Alaska, both available at AlaskaBooksandCalendars.com.
http://midnightsunak.com/2017/09/11/fagan-swamp-comes-alaska/
FAGAN: The swamp comes to Alaska
When you hear about the “swamp” you think of legal extortion, payola and shadiness spawned from the powerful based in Washington D.C. But all that “swamp” cash generated in the shadows from taxpayers swirling around in our nation’s capital eventually trickles down to states like Alaska.
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium board chairman Andy Teuber offers up one example of how the “swamp” works and benefits a select few even in the 49th state. ANTHC helps run the Alaska Native Medical Center. For years Mr. Teuber’s ANTHC board chairmanship earned him $122,000. Not bad for sitting on a board.
Keep in mind Mr. Teuber is not CEO nor is he involved in the day-to-day operation of ANTHC. For the most part he just runs the board meetings. Granted they probably require a lot of due diligence and homework, but it’s not like Mr. Teuber has to show up for work each day in a 9 to 5 scenario to earn his six-figures.
That would be physically impossible for Mr. Teuber since he already has a full-time job as president and chief executive of the Kodiak Area Native Association. A job which pays him a handsome salary of $539,000 dollars made up mostly of taxpayer money plus benefits. Big government has been very good to Andy Teuber.
Mr. Teuber also owns, operates and flies for a helicopter company in Kodiak. And according to Mr. Teuber’s Linkedin profile he serves as a UA regent, and board member for Alaska Airlines and the Alaska State Chamber of Commerce. One might wonder how much time he has left over for his six-figure ANTHC Board Chairmanship.
ANTHC claims Mr. Teuber works 65 hours a week as Board Chairman but his other employer, Kodiak Area Native Association. also claims he’s on the job 37.5 hours a week. If we are to believe this it means Mr. Teuber works 14-hours a day, 7-days a week, and then in his spare time serves on three other boards and operates and flies for his helicopter business. This is one busy dude.
The amazing and beautiful thing about the “swamp” for those fortunate enough to be its beneficiary is anything is possible. All of a sudden Mr. Teuber’s compensation for his ANTHC Board Chairmanship which he has very little time for went from a 6-figure income to a 7-figure one. Shockingly the ANTHC Board raised Mr. Teuber’s pay from $122,000 to $1.05 million per year. It’s always a party for those living in the “swamp.”
And then in what is the mother of all coincidences many of the very same ANTHC board members gave themselves a big raise. Six board members received an extra $249,000. Remember this is for sitting on a board! Previously board members were paid between $35,000 and $65,000 a year for an average of five hours a week of work according to a report filed by the Alaska Dispatch News. Again this is for sitting on a board!
Other ANTHC board members received smaller “swamp” payments like the wife of Kodiak RINO Sen. Gary Stevens who received a payment of $107,000 last year of taxpayer money. Remember this is for sitting on a board!
The lesson here kids is that if you are chairmen of a board and you want to take home a million bucks for it make sure the board members voting on your pay get their cut of the taxpayer loot too.
ANTHC justifies all of this by claiming the cash came from a settlement with the feds and they used the money to make up for years of “significant personal and professional sacrifices” by board members.
Yeah all those years of pulling in $35,000 to $65,000 per year for an average of five hours a week must have been really rough. For years those poor board members had to endure making a mere $250 an hour for sitting around a table five hours a week. How did they manage? I’m surprised they made it this long. With their new payment of $249,000, some board members now get close to $1,000 per hour for sitting around a table. “Swamp” work is good if you can get it.
All of this has come to light after another tribal health care giant, the Southcentral Foundation sued ANTHC claiming Mr. Teuber received an outrageous compensation package. Southcentral Foundation wants ANTHC to change its management practices.
We wonder why so many Americans are tired of the status quo. Unfortunately the case of Andy Teuber is duplicated many times over even in Alaska. This kind of stuff is rarely reported. Credit ADN’s Nat Herz for doing so on Sunday in much greater detail than I. Check it out on ADN.com.
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