Which Person isn't like the others?

One of the proposals of the Governance Committee is that salary information for Club employees be kept secret not only from the Owners, but also from any Board Member who isn't on the Compensation Committee. This, of course, represents a change to the current By-Laws which expressly guarantee each Board Member access to any corporate record. Just out of curiosity, I just spent about 30 minutes online looking for salary information about other people:

General Manager of Colleton River Club (Tim Bakels): ?

Beaufort County Administrator (Eric Greenway): $210,000 per year (https://www.blufftontoday.com/story/news/2021/06/15/beaufort-county-council-approves-administrators-contract/7705388002/)

Hilton Head Island Town Manager (Marc Orlando): $200,000 per year 

https://www.islandpacket.com/news/article248608640--Jan 20, 2021

 

South Carolina Governor (Henry McMaster): $106,078 (2018)

https://www.businessinsider.com/governor-salary-by-state-2018-1#south-carolina-40

 

Dana Corporation Board Member: $294,579 (2020)

https://sec.report/Document/0001140361-21-008145/

 

President of the United States (Joe Biden): $400,000

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_United_States


Not only is salary information not available to the Owners on-line, under the Governance Committee's proposal, only members of the Compensation Committee would have access to such information. I checked and the members of the Governance Committee aren't even listed on the Club's website. I seem to recall that there are three members of the Compensation Committee--so only 1/3 of the Board members would have access to salary information.


Why is the right to salary information important? When I was on the Board, I was made aware of two requests by Board Members for salary information--each of which were rejected by the GM and two different Board Presidents. I informed the GM and Boards President that they had no right to withhold such information, but they decided to wait and see if the requesting Board Members took any formal action. Neither Board Member further pursued the issue and the issue did not arise again until after I resigned from the Board. In the second case, the Board Member requested salary information about a staff member who was subject to that Board Member's committee oversight. Common sense tells you that your performance expectations are different for a highly paid employee than they would be for a lower paid employee. That Board Member had every right to the information.


Why didn't I request salary information myself? The Board Presidents assured me during two executive committee meetings that management salaries had been benchmarked and were within the range for similar clubs. I didn't believe that I needed more information to comply with my duty of care and I didn't particularly want to be one of four people who knew the information if it were to become driving range gossip. But there's a huge difference between my deciding I didn't need to see the employment agreements and being denied access to them if I determined that I needed to see them.


As the list above indicates, salary information is widely available for many people who represent the public. I pay a pretty small portion of Biden's or McMasters's salaries. But I pay 1/560 of the Club's GM's salary. It's not at all clear to me why Tim's right to privacy trumps my right to understand how much he makes and--more importantly--how his incentives will drive his behaviors.


This is a topic about which reasonable people can differ. I do not agree with people who feel that Tim's salary should be top secret from the Owners. But I can understand the position of those who feel that way. But I simply can't agree that withholding salary information from 2/3 of the Board (or any Board Member for that matter) is reasonable. We elect a Board to represent us. We don't elect a compensation committee to privately manipulate the most important lever of power in the community.


It seems odd to me that the person with the most direct impact on my day-to-day life is the person about whom I have the least compensation information.

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