State salaries often boosted

Private donors pad the paychecks of many agency bigwigs

Across North Carolina, from the state's museums to its zoo, it's common for the heads of high-profile agencies to draw private salaries to supplement their state pay.

A state audit last week drew attention to the case of Larry Wheeler, the accomplished and twice-paid director of the N.C. Museum of Art in Raleigh. The report said the museum had commingled public and private finances, operations and employees to the point that state officials could not ensure that it was being run legally and fairly.

But Wheeler is far from the only state employee who gets extra money from outside sources. Examples abound at museums and other cultural institutions, in particular. Private supporters also boost the salaries of sports coaches, university researchers, even aquarium managers.

In some cases, private foundations pay the entire salaries of people serving the public in government agencies.

Whether for a basketball coach or a museum director, state wages often aren't high enough to recruit and retain highly talented people, private fund-raisers say. Especially during the state's budget crunch of recent years, boosters of public cultural amenities such as museums helped make up for staffers' lack of raises.

"The state of North Carolina would be in sad shape if all that stopped," said Jeannie Mellinger, spokeswoman for the N.C. Symphony, where the state pays only eight of the 25 employees. Of those eight, the state and the symphony's private society share the salary expenses for six, including Mellinger, who gets one-third of her almost $50,000 pay from the society.

In 2003, the most recent year for which information is available, the society paid Symphony President David Worters $162,748. The state paid him nothing.

Though the practice is legal, no one knows how many other state employees also get private money to do their public jobs, because the state doesn't track it. Each department of state government supervises the supplemental pay arrangements of its employees.

In Wheeler's case, the state pays him about $100,000, and the art museum's foundation pays him about $113,000.

Last year, the foundation paid Wheeler a bonus of $130,000 and other benefits for particularly stellar work -- such as landing the donation of a $20 million private collection of sculptures by Auguste Rodin -- raising his total compensation to $358,041.

Guy who never sleeps

"What we came up with was fair," said Joyce Fitzpatrick, president of the art museum foundation's board. "Larry does yeoman's work. Nights, weekends, the guy never sleeps. He's worth his weight in gold.

"If you just took the Rodin gift to the people of North Carolina into consideration in determining Larry's 'worth,' you could justify a much higher compensation package than he has now."

Intertwined compensation peaks in university sports.

UNC-Chapel Hill men's basketball coach Roy Williams got an eight-year contract three years ago worth an average of about $1.6 million a year. Less than $300,000 of that is his state salary. The rest comes from shoe company Nike, his television and radio show producer, and the private Rams Club booster organization.

The state audit released Tuesday raised concerns that most of Wheeler's salary comes from the private foundation, which is unaccountable to the public and increasingly controls the museum. The private, nonprofit group also supplements the salaries of a dozen other museum staffers.

In general, Fitzpatrick said, the museum's combined public and private support benefits the state.

"Citizens of North Carolina are getting a world-class museum at a minimal cost," she said. "If we weren't able to supplement state incomes, I don't think the state would be able to attract the kind of talent we need."