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The administrator of the Motion Picture & Television Fund’s troubled retirement home in Woodland Hills commands a salary well in excess of half a million dollars a year, including a 20 per cent pay raise he was awarded shortly before the home announced that in order to avert bankruptcy, it was kicking out more than 100 infirm residents.
The salary figures for Dr. David Tillman, the MPTF’s chief executive, and other top officials are not widely known among the health-care workers and residents’ families now protesting the decision to shutter the MPTF’s long-term care facility and hospital before the end of the 2009.
They are, however, publicly available via the MPTF’s tax filings, and reveal numbers several times higher than is normal in the world of non-profit retirement homes – not to mention higher than the cap President Obama placed last week on the salaries of corporate chief executives receiving federal bailout money.
Tillman earned $502,200 in 2006 – when, according to MPTF officials, if not according to their own audited accounts, the home was already aware of a looming financial crisis. That salary figure then ballooned to $596,957 in 2007, the last year for which figures are available.
The MPTF’s chief financial officer, Frank Guarrera, saw his pay jump from $359,162 in 2006 to $411,153 in 2007. Taken together, the two men earned well over $1 million.
“That’s absolutely exorbitant,” said nursing-home expert Betsy Hite of the California Association of Health Facilities. “The average nursing home administrator makes maybe $100,000. This is clearly out of the norm. People who typically care for the elderly do it because of a calling in their heart, not a calling to the bank.”
The MPTF’s own audited accounts show that total salaries and related expenses came to a staggering $60.7 million in 2007, up from $58.9 million in 2006. Although exact employee numbers are not available – the fund did not respond to requests for the figures – the United Healthcare Workers union represents 573 full- and part-time workers at the home. Assuming the fund employs another 100-200 people, that means the average annual income comes to somewhere in the $80-$90,000 range.
That kind of money is not going to licensed nurses, who earn about $25.50 an hour plus another $9 an hour in benefits, according to California HealthCare Foundation figures. Nursing assistants earn around $17.50 an hour.
One financial expert unconnected to the home, who did not wish to be named, commented: “How on earth can they justify $60 million per year in salaries? That’s insanely high. They’re not an investment bank, they’re a retirement home.”
The executive salary figures have provoked astonishment among residents’ families now campaigning to keep the long-term care facility open, and among United Healthcare Workers officials worried about the announced lay-off of an estimated 240 staff at the home.
The figures are also likely to raise eyebrows in the wider Hollywood community, since they represent a signficant portion of the charity funds raised, say, at Jeffrey Katzenberg’s annual pre-Oscar Night Before gala, which hauled in more than $6 million in each of the past two years, or at any of the other benefits held for the home and its residents.
