Avista overpaying executives

“Every time a board tries to keep an executive happy by offering above-average pay, the net effect is to raise the average that everyone else will use as a baseline.” (“Executives took, but the directors gave,” By Heather Landy, New York Times, April 4).

Why do we care locally? In the years when I was a shareholder, the board of Avista Corp. followed this common practice of compensating its top executives by paying them at an “above average” level compared with similar utilities. Likely, they still do. Although the Utilities and Transportation Commission claims that shareholders rather than ratepayers fund this excessive compensation, common sense dictates otherwise.

Because corporate boards, cozy with the executives they are charged with supervising, keep raising executive pay, they now compensate CEOs at 300 percent of the pay of the average worker in America. The public, and especially shareholders, should complain loudly.

Molly O’Reilly

Sandpoint