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Report Shows UTA Executive Pay is About Market Average

A lengthy report on the compensation of executives and non-union workers at the Utah Transit Authority shows that they are actually paid an amount on par with similar organizations.

The UTA Board of Directors commissioned the report about 18 months ago in an effort to get to the bottom of the perception that UTA executives are paid too much. The Utah based company Employers Council put together the report. Monica Whalen is its President and CEO.

“UTA has a well designed, well administered, market-based total compensation program for its non-union employees that should give the Utah public confidence that they are paid within the market median range,” Whalen says.

To get to those findings, Employers Council compared UTA’s base pay, bonuses, and employee benefits to those offered by similar transit, non-profit, and governmental organizations.

UTA Spokesman Remi Barron says he hopes this report will begin to help change the negative public perception UTA’s executives have.

“It’s hard sometimes for people to accept that transit executives get paid as much as they do, but it’s a highly technical highly skilled job dealing with all of the technology, and rail lines, and different bus lines, and commuter rail,” he says.

In 2014 a legislative audit pointed out that some executive benefits seemed unusually high, but the UTA board responded by capping bonuses at $7500. On Wednesday, the board also approved a measure that will set the salary of new executive hires at a rate that is lower than the market average. 

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