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Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

See the DOE lab executive "Piggies" all in a row? This article below about the high salaries of NREL executives pales in comparison to what Directors, PADs, ADs, etc. at labs like SNL, LLNL and LANL make under the hilarious banner of "cost-savings" from privatization implemented by NNSA.

Several years ago the ABQ news reported that SNL's Director was making over $2 million and those executive salaries have only gone up, up, up!

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CO: Secret energy lab spawns million dollar govt employee

...Despite record federal debt, municipal bankruptcies and a nagging global recession, those executives enjoy pay packages that are out of reach of most Americans who pay their salaries. MRIGlobal and Alliance tax documents obtained by Watchdog show most earned well into six-figures:

Dan Arvizu, Alliance president and NREL director

2010: $928,069

2009: $691,570

2008: $652,159


Bobi Garrett, NREL senior vice president of Outreach, Planning and Analysis

2010: $524,226.

2009: $398,022


watchdog.org/62420/co-secret-energy-lab
-spawns-million-dollar-govt-employee/

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What's that you say? You only got a 1% raise for the last few years? Follow the money....

Comments

Anonymous said…
Poor NREL has always been a backwater energy lab and now it comes out that they pay their director a second rate salary when compared to the NNSA labs.
Anonymous said…
Wow, talk about salary inflation! What in the world did these guys at NREL do that was so almighty powerful to require gains in their executive salaries like those shown? Still, NREL executive salary inflation looks puny compared to the increases that took place after privatization of the NNSA lab management contracts in the mid-2000s.

I remember the late 1990s when Director Sig Hecker at LANL made around $250,000 per year, didn't ride a luxury car paid for by the lab and was a valued and frequently seen member of the local community of Los Alamos.

Today, cloistered lab Directors are "comped" to the max by the LLC board with endless perks. Charlie McMillan is likely pulling down well over $2 million per year. You can be pretty sure he demanded a "substantially equivalent" match to the $2 million salary that SNL's Director was making over 3 years ago. While all this is happening, salaries of the lab staff stagnate for years, witholdings are rapidly increasing and the endless benefit cuts continue.
Anonymous said…
Does anyone actually have the stones to say the word?

CORRUPTION!!!
Anonymous said…
Yea this is BAD. Those salaries are absolutely unjustified at NREL.
Anonymous said…
This is really hypocritical: First the right says we need to privatize the labs, and then when they are privatized, the same people complain
about the large salaries.
Have the govt run the labs and you will get govt salaries, if it is the private industries, they will pay differently. So stop whining.
Anonymous said…
Who are these NREL people? Are they using NREL as a revolving door or parking lot for high-salary-requirement industry leaders or government bureaucrats? Clearly the high salary is not justified for such a small lab like NREL.

Anonymous said…
what is an nrel and how can i get hired there?
Anonymous said…
what is an nrel and how can i get hired there?

February 26, 2013 at 7:43 PM

Same as getting hired anywhere else - demonstrably great credentials and experience. Oh, that lets you out?...
Anonymous said…
Nah. Child molestation. Where did you say you lived.
Anonymous said…
Feb 26 @7:35 AM wrote:

"This is really hypocritical: First the right says we need to privatize the labs, and then when they are privatized, the same people complain
about the large salaries."

------
Sorry but your argument is totally false. The labs were NOT fully privatized, the Government approves all management salaries at the labs.

No one can seriously claim that the director of a lab that tests solar cells and windmills should make anywhere near the amount of money that the director of a nuclear weapons lab makes. Such high salaries can only be explained by CORRUPTION!!!

Unfortunately, a Fed in the Obama administration did approve the exorbitant NREL salaries. The Fed responsible for NREL salaries is almost certainly a left-winger. Do you disagree?
Anonymous said…
Please provide proof of that statement:
the Government approves all management salaries at the labs.


And based on what is the following?:

No one can seriously claim that the director of a lab that tests solar cells and windmills should make anywhere near the amount of money that the director.

Its called free market. But you are probably not getting that one either.

And left-winger? as in contrast to right wing nut?

Anonymous said…
NREL and the National Labs are all supported by Government funding and they all have Government-controlled salaries.

The labs are the antithesis of the free market. Sheesh.
Anonymous said…
NREL and the National Labs are all supported by Government funding and they all have Government-controlled salaries


Repeating the same point over and over does it not make better. It is like doing the same experiment over and over, and getting the same wrong result.

And maybe you will remember that the current setup of the lab organization has been done by:
G.W. Bush
a GOP controlled house
a GOP controlled senate.

So it was done by your friends and comrades.

I have worked at 4 different national labs before and after the corporate takeover and once the suits came in, the entitlement atmosphere in upper mgmt started.
While I have no problems with calling those salaries not justified, I have a huge problem with saying it is justified for this lab but not for that one.
It is in the eye of the beholder, what is a worthwhile cause and what not.
As long as you are trying to look at labs and their missions through ideologically colored glasses, you will also find something at fault in the one you don't like.

Anonymous said…
All the labs are managed by the Obama administration. If there's something wrong, which there is, it is the responsibility of the Obama administration to fix it, irregardless of who set things up. Obama isn't getting the job done, is he?

I thought this thread was about NREL. NREL wasn't set up by Bush, began operating in 1977 under your idol, Jimmy Carter.

Free market? Sheesh.

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