The 15.7 percent raises last month for UNC-Chapel Hill Chancellor James Moeser and N.C. State University Chancellor James Oblinger were approved by the UNC Board of Governors two and a half weeks before Moeser announced his intentions to step down from the position. That was no accident, UNC President Erskine Bowles said Friday, Jane Stancill reports.
The $53,035 raises were given, in part, to raise the UNC-CH chancellor's salary to a more competitive level as the search begins for Moeser's replacement. "The other part was they deserve it," Bowles said. "If you look at where the median and where the 80th percentile is for people who run institutions like N.C. State and Chapel Hill, they're signficantly higher." The salaries were raised to $390,835.
A similar rationale was given by Bowles for UNC Health Care System CEO Dr. William Roper's salary bump, which was reported as a 7.2 percent increase to $690,000. That wasn't just an increase over his base salary, but was calculated based on his total compensation the previous year (the base salary plus a $110,000 bonus he received in 2006-07). Roper had also received a mid-year salary adjustment in February — a raise of $44,502 — "to partially offset the loss of future performance-based bonuses," said UNC spokeswoman Joni Worthington.
So while the UNC Health Care's board eliminated bonuses for its executives earlier this year, Roper still ended up with a higher paycheck. Roper's bonus had been sharply criticized by people who complained about the health care system's aggressive collection practices toward patients.
