RI's Highest Paid Municipal Bosses

RI's Highest Paid Municipal Bosses

At least 150 department heads, top aides, and other city and town leaders in Rhode Island earn six figures or more, collecting a total of $18.4 million in the current fiscal year, according to new data from the state Division of Municipal Finance.

Overall, the highest paid local official is Providence School Superintendent Susan Lusi, whose salary is $195,700 in the current year. As a general rule, superintendents are the highest paid officials at the city or town level, exceeding the salaries even of many managers and mayors, the data show.

When the school department is excluded, the highest paid officials are a mix of mayors, managers, and other department heads. The top executive position—mayor, manager, or administrator—accounts for 10 of the top 30 highest paid municipal positions. Three are fire chiefs. Three are police chiefs and three are local finance directors. (See below slides for the full list of the top 30 highest paid municipal officials.)

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But the highest paid among the non-school positions is the general manager of the Providence Water Supply Board, Ricky Caruolo, whose current compensation is $165,850, when longevity and other pay is included.

Providence accounts for nine of the top 30 positions. The next largest contingent, numbering five, is from Newport. Warwick has three positions on the list and East Providence has two. The other communities represented on the list had just one position.

Providence official an exception to the rule

While most positions on the list are taxpayer-funded, the highest paid position is not: the head of the Providence Water Supply Board. “It is an enterprise that is self-sustaining, so they don’t get paid by taxpayer dollars,” said Dyana Koelsch, a spokeswoman for the agency. Providence Water’s operating budget is instead largely funded through utility rates, according to Koelsch.

She noted that Caruolo oversees an annual budget of $71.7 million and 250 employees that serve 600,000 households across the state. “So it’s not just Providence,” Koelsch said. “Even though it is a municipal agency, it is a statewide service.”

Caruolo is a 22-year veteran of the agency with an MBA and degrees in finance and management. He became acting general manager in February 2014 and his appointment became permanent in June of that year.

Despite ranking at the top of the list of non-school municipal officials, Caruolo is actually paid less than his two predecessors, according to Koelsch. State data show that Caruolo has a base salary of $155,000 for a position that can pay as much as $188,403 a year.

Service or entitlement?

Only one other water department head made the list: Caruolo’s counterpart in Pawtucket. The rest are all taxpayer-funded positions.

One taxpayer advocate worries that high compensation may lead to an entitlement mentality among local officials. Rather than welcome citizen involvement, they are incentivized to preserve their power, according to Justin Katz, the research director for the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity.

“At a recent meeting of the Tiverton Budget Committee, newly elected member Donna Cook commented that people are beginning to feel like they work for the town’s employees, rather than the other way around,” said Justin Katz, who is also a Tiverton resident.

“Simply put, government creates far too many opportunities for people to reach the upper tax brackets,” Katz added. “When residents of a city of town decide to get active at the local level, they’re inherently disadvantaged against a group with so much incentive to keep things out of their hands, and for whom political advocacy is ultimately part of their job.”

But, for others, the compensation reflects what is demanded of local officials.

Peder Schaefer, the associate director of the Rhode Island League of Cities and Towns, said that pay is a function of the size and nature of the community and the responsibilities of the department leader.

“As far as department heads, each city or town has to look at what’s involved,” Schaefer said. “It’s difficult to compare a Block Island with Providence—even a Charlestown with a Woonsocket, for example. There may be 39 cities and towns but they’re not all alike.”

Salaries vary, as do explanations for them

But community size, characteristics, and job requirements do not always seem to account for the range of salaries.

Both Smithfield and South Kingstown are, by Rhode Island standards, medium-sized suburbs. But the town manager in South Kingstown earns a total $163,344 while his counterpart in Smithfield is paid $107,087.

“As for municipal managers’ pay, it’s interesting that the ranking of their salaries from high to low doesn’t particularly correspond to either the size of the municipality or to how low its ​property taxes are, though these would certainly be logical factors when determining compensation level,” said Monique Chartier, spokeswoman for the RI Taxpayers group.

Salaries also can simply reflect the job market. Susanne Greschner, the chief of the Division of Municipal Finance, said the agency publishes its annual salary survey as a guide to communities. “The main purpose of publishing this survey is to provide municipalities with a comparison of salaries for various categories that they can use when hiring employees for those positions,” she said.

Experience and longevity also play a role: South Kingtown’s manager, Stephen Alfred, has more than 30 years on the job and is the longest-serving municipal chief executive in Rhode Island.

But the highest paid chief executive is Shawn Brown, the town administrator in Middletown, who has far fewer years in the position than Alfred does. State Sen. Louis DiPalma, who served on the town council when Brown was hired, suggested that his compensation was tied to his responsibilities and his ability to deliver results.

Administrators, DiPalma said, are expected to be “chief cook and bottle washer.”

“We expect them to do everything,” DiPalma said.

It’s Brown’s track record of producing results that is key, DiPalma said. “Shawn does that in spades,” he said. 

An argument for regionalization?

But DiPalma also sees opportunities for saving money by sharing services, leading to an eventual consolidation of positions through attrition. DiPalma, the co-chair of a joint legislative commission that is studying sharing municipal services, said local government should always be looking for opportunities to be more effective and efficient while cutting costs.

“We need to squeeze as much as we can out of the property taxes we collect,” DiPalma said.

Ironically, sharing services and consolidating positions may allow communities to pay individuals more, attracting the talent they need. DiPalma pointed to IT managers as an example. He said cities and towns usually cannot compete with the compensation offered by private industry. But instead of having two IT directors, one for the town and one for schools, the positions could be combined, resulting in a higher salary for the individual that still yields a net savings for taxpayers.

Chartier sees other opportunities for regionalization, especially to cut down on administrative costs in school districts. “Regionalization must be approached cautiously. But communities can’t afford to spend millions of dollars combined on superintendents and deputy superintendents who preside over comparatively small school districts,” she said. 

At the local level, the consolidation movement does not seem to be catching on very quickly. Out of 33 positions surveyed in each of the 39 cities and towns—a total potential of 1,287 positions—just nine constituted positions that had already been consolidated, according to the state survey.

“While it’s a good start, there’s more runway to go to … achieve the results that are really possible,” DiPalma said.

Tips can be sent to [email protected]. Follow Stephen Beale on Twitter @bealenews