Pa. Turnpike execs get $367,107 in pay raises, including CEO’s $86,000 boost

By Tirzah Christopher, pennlive.com (TNS)

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission approved a total of $367,107 in pay raises for the organization’s chief officers during a closed-door executive session in March.

The raises were recommended by a wage study commissioned in February, which offered two options that resulted in the same total cost for salary increases.

CEO Mark Compton received the highest individual pay raise—more than $86,000, or a 33% increase, bringing his salary to around $348,000.

The salaries are funded with toll revenue—the same pot that makes up the commission’s operating budget and General Reserve fund, which supports public transit under a 2007 state mandate.

Six executives earn more than Gov. Josh Shapiro, each making more than $250,000.

A letter with signatures from the commissioners obtained by PennLive said that the pay raise was for “leadership retention” and helped align the executive team’s compensation to “market standards.”

The executives’ raises come as the turnpike closes in on 17 years of annual toll increases that has bumped the cost of crossing the state to as much as $200 for drivers without EZ Pass and accumulated debt higher than that of the state of Pennsylvania.

PennLive was referred to the commissioners’ statement when it requested interviews with the chief officers, who said the decision was made by the commission.

The letter said that even though this pay increase could “raise questions and concerns,” the commission is “committed to transparency throughout this process.” The study wasn’t made public until requested by PennLive last week.

Tim Potts, founder of Democracy Rising, a good governance advocacy group called the raises “an absolute outrage.”

“Do they think they’re in the private sector?” Potts asked. “When you work in the public sector, you have to work for the public so make your case to the public.”

Benchmark agencies had three times higher operating budgets:

In the study, the executive team’s salaries were compared with salaries from 42 tolling, transportation and independent government agencies across 19 states and Washington, D.C.

The study also pulled data from two compensation databases and applied filters for agencies with an average operating budget of about $1.6 billion. That’s more than three times the Turnpike Commission’s projected 2026 budget of $459.7 million.

Cory Ng, associate professor of accounting at Villanova University and a licensed CPA in Pennsylvania, said that it was “unclear” why those numbers were chosen.

The board voted on the unspecified raises without public discussion during a meeting in March. State secretary of transportation, Michael Carroll, chairs the commission. The board of commissioners also includes former SEPTA chairman, Pasquale T. Deon Sr., Dr. Keith Leaphart, a Philadelphia physician, philanthropist and entrepreneur, former state Sen. Sean Logan and Douglas Farnham, founder and CEO of Farnham & Pfile Engineering Inc.

Philip Hensley-Robin, executive director of Common Cause Pennsylvania, called the pay increases a policy decision, noting they were based on a commissioned study, albeit one conducted without public notice.

“And the public deserves to know how that decision is being made and why it’s being made,” Hensley-Robin said. “It may very well be fully justified by the performance of the executives but if it’s not done transparently, people are going to rightfully wonder why.”

The commissioners said in a letter that the pay raise was necessary for “leadership retention” and helped align the executive team’s compensation to “market standards.”

When PennLive asked the Turnpike Commission whether the organization was losing employees over low pay, a spokesperson for the commission said that “we are very proud of our 90 plus percent retention rate.”

The executive team joined the agency at various points over the past two decades. Chief counsel Doreen McCall has been with the commission for around 20 years and now earns more than $273,000 after receiving a 16% raise. But the raises were applied across the board.

Chief strategy and communications officer Kelli Roberts, who started in 2013, got a 16% raise, bringing her salary to more than $213,000.

The complex financial history of America’s first superhighway

The Pennsylvania Turnpike opened in 1940, quickly became “America’s Dream Highway,” its popularity even inspiring songs like Vaughn Horton’s “Pennsylvania Turnpike, I Love You,” in 1970.

But the highway has come at a steadily increasing cost all who use it.

When Act 44 was passed in 2007 without federal permission to toll I-80, PennDOT transferred ownership of the highway to the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission. Gov. Ed Rendell tried to lease approximately 500 miles of the state’s turnpike to a private entity for a massive, upfront payment of $12.8 billion. The proposal failed.

Three years and around $2.5 billion in payments later, the federal government denied the request to toll I-80. The Turnpike Commission bore the brunt of the deal, stuck with an annual $450 million payment to PennDOT for public transit.

“That’s no fault of the employees or the executive staff,” said Rep. Ed Neilson, D-Philadelphia, majority chair of the House transportation committee. “We shouldn’t be able to punish people because of bad decisions made by members of the Legislature in the past.”

In 2013, Act 89 caused the annual payment to drop down to $50 million starting fiscal year 2023. Because of this, the commission has had to borrow millions and increase toll prices annually.

Since then, the state auditor general found that uncollected tolls increased over the years, more people quit using the turnpike and the commission has more debt than the entire state’s debt combined. (Albeit, the commission’s spokesperson added, around $8 billion of its debt was state-imposed.)

Financial statements for the fiscal year ending in May 2023 show that the organization had around $18.6 billion in debt and future monies that the company had yet to receive. None of the other agencies included in the study’s sample had a debt level anywhere near that of the commonwealth’s turnpike commission.

“The report acknowledges PTC’s debt load as an outlier but it does not adjust salary benchmarks based on this debt,” Ng noted.

But a spokesperson for the commission cited the high debt as one of the reasons that the raises were justified.

“The current team has been able to manage that debt successfully while continuing to deliver a high level of service to our customers.”

A grand jury in Dauphin County noted in 2013 that the “Turnpike itself remains in existence only so long as it remains in debt.” When all bonds, payments and interests have been paid, the highway will be toll-free “and thereupon, the Commission shall be dissolved.”

How does the pay stack up?

The study analyzed salaries from five other state agencies: The Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency, Pennsylvania Housing Finance Authority, Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), and the State Employees Retirement System (SERS). Compton has the second-lowest salary among the CEOs and executive directors of the five agencies.

But Compton also makes 78% more than the executive director of the Ohio Turnpike Commission. He also makes $138,000 more than the CEO of the Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise.

Neilson called the pay raise necessary to retain good leadership.

“They deserve it,” Neilson said. “It’s way less than CEOs across the country, like the top 1%. And I believe the governor appointees on that commission, I believe they are making sure we can keep good employees at the top and all the way throughout the executive staff.”

The selected option was one of the medium-cost choices. Lower-cost alternatives appeared later, among six other recommendations, in an appendix following the auditors’ signatures.

RKL Virtual Management Solutions, the firm that conducted the study, has held other contracts with the state before. The company declined PennLive’s request for an interview.

“There are a lot of people who lead better for a lot less,” Tim Potts said of the Turnpike executives. “It’s never going to look like the private sector, so if you don’t like the public domain, get out.”

Meanwhile, Turnpike motorists will face a 4% toll increase in 2026, though they can save 50% by using E-ZPass.

The last toll increase is scheduled for 2051.