New York City’s new transit boss gets $40,000 raise

Elliot Sander, the new executive director and chief executive of the authority, will receive a total compensation package of $340,000 a year, including a salary of $265,000, a housing allowance of $60,000 and $15,000 in deferred compensation.

Sander’s predecessor in the top post at the MTA, Katherine Lapp, was paid a total of $298,000 a year. A spokesperson for recently inaugurated Democratic Governor Elliot Spitzer justified the 14 percent raise by pointing to Sander’s being given the newly minted title of “chief executive” in addition to that of executive director.

The pay boost for the new MTA boss was announced just weeks after a state arbitration board imposed a takeaway contract on New York City’s 34,000 bus and subway workers.

The city’s print media, from the New York Times to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, took only brief note of the pay raise, both taking pains to point out that Sander’s pay was still lower than that of transit chiefs in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

The Post further offered by way of justification: “And the city’s transportation system is no doubt the largest and most complex in the nation, if not the world.”

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http://wsws.org/articles/2007/jan2007/tran-j09.shtml