I am not well versed in the dark arts of tax forms but by simply "glazing" through 45-pages of the the USAS 990 Public Disclosure document one could not help but notice some very, large, hairy, warts staring back.
According to the USAS 990 Public Disclosure document that was sent to me, CEO Chuck Wielgus of USA Swimming now makes $731,581 a year which is way up from his $636,651 paycheck from the previous year.
Did any of you get a 13% raise this year? Note, this is during a year when the San Jose sex abuse scandal broke in April of 2009 and the two hostile documentaries aired on national TV branding our sport a haven for pedophiles in 2010.
I suppose trying to get by on $12,000 a week was just simply too unkind, Hence, USA Swimming in their "grand display of benevolence" now pay him $14,000 a week or $350-an-hour if he works a 40-hour week. What he makes in an 8-hour day at this "non-profit" is what an average American makes in an entire week month.
Another disgusting aspect of this filing is that USA Swimming spent $1.3-million on lawyers trying to "metaphorically" beat up a 14-year-old girl who is suing them over the San Jose sex abuse case. Perhaps a 1-million dollar settlement would have been a better use of capital reserves rather then trying to crush the victim? Where is the Board of Directors on this? What are they, "Yes-Men?"
Now, ask yourself this, how much of USA Swimming's money is actually put into the subject of their non profit? i.e. How much of that money goes into producing Olympians and growing the sport of swimming. I need an accountant to help me figure it out but USA Swimming sure looks really good at collecting money.
From what I am seeing in my perfunctory read through the document, there is no reason why USA Swimming can't be paying our national team members $100,000 a year each, or more accurately, less than 20% of their annual budget so as to both grow the sport and make swimming more popular.
2 comments:
I think the National Team members should be paid a decent wage as an extra incentive to full focus on training as well.
How do we make this happen?
Top exec of such a large organization should make a large salary but this one looks to be about 200% too high.
A new board has to be elected to get this to change or the Senate has to get involved.
I am still going through the 990 but also they may have spent more money on computers than they did handing out grants of excellance clubs. I need to do the math.
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