Talk:Vermont Energy Investment Corporation

Salaries

An editor deleted, then reverted salaries which were questioned by the Burlington Free Press. Editor may have a point. I think the top people should be in here by name. But certainly the other jobs by salary. Still, these are important people, the reason they are paid so much, so maybe they should be in here by name. Student7 (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2009 (UTC)

I don't agree. A controversy can be discussed and a press article referenced, but aside from mentioning salaries as examples to explain the controversy, there is no reason to list salaries. You don't see salaries listed in typical encyclopedia articles about organizations, so I don't think it's justified here when it would do to simply explain that there was a news article about it. Gfanslow (talk) 00:47, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

Actually, the salaries for presidents, mayors, CEOs are listed. This is important information. The reader wonders why the person seeks the job. With salary, they may be able to determine if it is simple greed, or power that motivates them. Forcing the reader to seek this information, is a bit much.

This information wasn't in the old timey encyclopedia because it was perishable information, obsolete over the long shelf life of the volumes. This is not true of Wikipedia which can provide up-to-date information.

The American world is jammed full of one-person charities with an "Executive Director" who is the only one with a steady salary. If the amount raised for the charity is not much higher than that person's salary, it would seem to me that the charity (501c3) is not terribly useful from a social point ot view. Again, a reader might be able to figure that out.

The point of the revelation here by the Free Press, is that charities, beyond the scrutiny of the public, can raise their salaries to artificially high levels, which would not be justified in a corporation because they would be unsustainable. They are sustainable in "charity" cases because someone is real good at raising money or writing grants. But with the information here, the reader might be able to evaluate for him/herself the value of the supposedly overpaid people.

Often articles are written by young people for which money "just happens." Money doesn't "just happen". It comes from someplace. Giving financials is a much more realistic way of evaluating most articles where the principal point is money. The only raison d'etre for this charity is the raising and spending of money. Its use of it should be made plain so the reader can made an evaluation. Student7 (talk) 11:54, 2 May 2009 (UTC)

I don't see why simply referencing the controversy with a link to an article doesn't suffice. Listing a bunch of salaries and naming a bunch of employees without some perspective on how their complensation compares with industry norms doesn't really say anything. I've looked at as many entries on a similar sized NGO's as I can think of and I literally can't find a single one where salaries are listed in this detail.

About your point that NGO's may be overcompensating some employees, I'm sure this is an issue in some cases (I don't know much about it), but I think it would be better addressed in the entry on non-profit organizations rather than making the issue in entry on a random organization.

If you can provide the link to Free Press article, why don't we just describe the controversy and link to the article.(Gfanslow (talk) 01:53, 4 May 2009 (UTC))

I know that printed articles aren't very reassuring sometimes, but they tend to persist. Just looked up the BFP article online in order to provide the requested web ptr and they had already removed it, which is annoying in this case. Sorry.

As you can guess from the title of the article, the BFP suggested, as a result of Montpelier criticism that some employees among Vermont's many 501c3 that depend, to some extent, on state money, might be getting a bit more than they should. They realized that they were not really set up to analyze each case in detail and so just published those salaries over $100 k (above industry norms in the BFP author's opinion), as I recall. Not wanting to be WP:UNDUE, I created the article on the VEIC, which organization, I suppose, can do a lot of good.

But I do have questions, not so much about these folks, but about all these public charities which run essentially unmonitored, and whose livelihood depends on grant-writing and public solicitation for funds for "good works." There seems to be no parameters regarding salaries. Pretty much the same with public corporations at the very top, too, BTW, except they, at least, get a lot of attention, for all the good it does....

I think this could provide researchers with the tools to develop that analysis. But, for the record, I'm not mad or jealous of these people (a la AIG). Just a little suspicious (as was the printed reference), that's all. Student7 (talk) 11:39, 4 May 2009 (UTC)

So at this point it sounds like the way to go is some mention of a controversy, with a general characterization of salaries etc, doing away with the relatively long section devoted to it now. There's not link to the original article, but it could be summarized in good faith and still be acceptable, Right?

Moving past this minor issue, let's address your point that it's an organization that's generally doing interesting and original stuff. I'll try to put some time into expanding it a bit and linking to other articles related to energy efficiency. Does that seem a reasonable way to proceed? Gfanslow (talk) 13:37, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

It may seem a bit silly since we are both familiar with what is going on, but I have separated the salary information from the people. I hope this makes it less shaming and finger-pointing, and therefore more objective. What do you think? Student7 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2009 (UTC)

Deleted once again. Doesn't seem to be any statement of their finances. Student7 (talk) 23:20, 12 June 2012 (UTC)