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NEWS
Comptroller Says Directors of Art and Culture
Organizations Received Exorbitant Salaries
by G. Kleiman
Directors of culture and arts institutions still receive
extremely high salaries despite severe budget deficits and
financial crises at the organizations they head, according to
a report released by State Comptroller Eliezer Goldberg.
The report contains a list of 114 directors who receive
particularly high salaries, including 106 whose salaries
exceed NIS 300,000 ($68,000) per year. Fifty-six directors
earned over NIS 400,000 ($90,000). The highest salary was NIS
1,060,000 ($244,000). Among the 114 directors surveyed the
average salary came to NIS 458,000 ($103,000) annually. The
salary figures were taken from requests for support the
institutions themselves submitted.
MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni told Yated Ne'eman that the
Shinui Party owes the public an explanation for these
exorbitant salaries in state-subsidized cultural
organizations since it works to get State support for them.
"Why is [Shinui] initiating budget increases for those who
squeeze the state budget dry regardless of the severe economy
state?" he asked. "The Shinui Party is demanding funding for
directors of cultural organizations who receive salaries of
over one million shekels per year, which effectively harms
budgets for the middle class and the [underclass]. A
committee that was supposed to assess the salaries of these
directors has not met for more than six years. It also turns
out that Shinui takes pains to transfer funds to these
institutions in order to finance these inflated directors'
salaries and meanwhile they demand that the government [cut
more and more funding] for yeshiva students, child support
allowances, single-parent families, the elderly, the
handicapped and children. The public will undoubtedly remind
the Shinui Party of this on the day of reckoning and punish
them for it."
According to the Comptroller's report, the Ministry of
Science was in charge of the Cultural Authority from 2000 to
2002. In November 2002 a law was enacted to regulate the
status of the Public Council for Culture and the Arts. From
1996 until 2002 the Council did not meet even once. Therefore
no guidelines for funding and directors' salaries were
formulated. The Funding Support Committee determined the
amount of funding these institutions would receive, without
providing explanations or disclosures.
Since the council became inactive in 2002 no replacement has
been appointed and guidelines for funding distribution have
not been reviewed. The Culture Authority did not formulate
criteria despite a High Court demand to do so. In 2003 the
Culture Authority announced it was already in the process of
formulating criteria and guidelines for granting funding to
these so-called cultural institutions. The present criteria
for receiving funding are not clear to anyone. Cultural
institutions are constantly declaring they face budget
crises, yet attempts by the Finance Ministry and the Science
Ministry to limit the directors' state-subsidized salaries
failed.
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