Eye-opening compensation levels at some of Alaska's six Community Development Quota companies are old news. But still interesting.
The example cited most often is that of Morgen Crow, executive director at Coastal Villages Region Fund. He made $475,000 in 2011, according to the company's latest annual report.
You might be surprised at who ranked second and third behind Crow on Coastal's list of top-paid personnel.
They were Robert Thelen, skipper of the Coastal-owned crab boat North Sea ($356,582), and Owen Kvinge, skipper of another company crabber, the Arctic Sea ($347,502).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
58 comments:
Dont skippers of high liner Crab boats typically make that kind of income? Maybe I am missing something here, but they probably earned every penny as skippers.
Didn't Larry Cotter of APICDA make 425,000 as well? Put on some real news Wes.
Larry made 425,000 while sitting back and talking royalties while these guys at coastal do the real work with their 100% owned vessels. Such a shame that Wes fails to point that out.
Compensation in the past has been TWICE that for Crow. He hasn't taken a 50% pay cut. Clearly there is another 400-500K hidden somewhere in some funky, unreported bonus package. Just a little more fuzzy math to make sure noboby knows what's really going on.
Crow wouldn't dare underreport his income from CVRF. That would be a Magnuson Act violation.
Larry answers to 300 people and that number is decreasing. Hmmm
Yep, big salary reduction. In 2010, CVRF paid Morgen Crow $832,367.
After reading through the groups reports for the decennial review I'd have to conclude that failure has a very high price.
It's ironic that if he facilitate poaching of salmon with a trawler to catch pollock, a native mis-leader is rewarded with a half million stipend. But if he catch the same salmon in a river to feed an elder a real-leader's nets are confiscated and he's hauled in to court for a predetermined guilty verdict.The injustice of it is glaring at a holiday without salmon strips in Western Alaska. Hunger, while the corporate poacher is probably swiping the old company card at a strip club. Ah, the transition from old strips to new. THAT'S REAL PROGRESS!!!!!!
lol. Always nice to come on Deckboss and read all the thoughtful comments. So many well-informed people in one place!
That's what his last girlfriend said too. Merry Christmas!
Come out come out wherever you are!
Me an my village gonna go nex NPFMC meeting and say thank you thank you Trevor an Morgan Crow. Thank you for nets we sign contrac sayn "Pollock Provide McCabe & Crow fat paychek" "Pollock Provides empty of salmon Kuskokwim & Yukon". "Pollock Provide guilty verdict poor village fishermen."
Hey "Me an my village" guy....How about just stepping in and firing Morgan and Trevor. You people own the CDQ resources - make it work for you or STFU! The crooks will screw you until you know your power to stop it.
Get the steam bath house rip roaring hot and invite the CVRF Board of Directors over for a steam down. Those who can't handle the heat needs to be replaced.
It's not a laughing matter that the Pollock Fishery is destroying the Salmon Culture of the Western Alaska rivers and streams.
All these programs that created this road to hell in fisheries were paved with good intentions. But the money fell into the wrong hands. the blatantly corrupt village politicians who were stealing money from their clinics, housing programs, equipment rentals, while being sued for sexual harassment etc. With no empathy whatsoever for the people they were depriving, have lucked int vast undreamed of wealth from the federal fountain. And to this day maintain the sociopathic behavior making it now the legitimate norm.
New inductees to the scheme are given an initiation in greed, if they show character and responsibility they're shunned,& booted out.
This decennial review is a hoax. The fix is in. The review process itself is corrupt. Letting the groups write their own report card, handing them a blank check to keep doing more of the same.
This collusion between the Council Familia, elected waiters & waitresses pandering for campaign tips, from programs they themselves fund, and feckless commissioners who lack the nerve to talk truth to power, are colluding in the depredation of the Bering Sea. Crab, Halibut, & Salmon are in trouble. Edged out by the deeper pockets pollock trawled full.
Will they ever quit worshipping their bitch goddess of maximum economic efficiency, and act in respect of the web of human & marine life that has flourished for ages?
Actually, it's a simple case of the Biggest Bullies guarding the Goose and it's Golden Egg.
No ethics, no empathy, no compassion. The poor remain poor and the rich get richer.
Like I was sayin' to Sven & Ole at the Sons of Norway
Christmas party. "Why do Norwiegan Trawlers have such strong arms?" Answer: "By lifting Western Alaska's Dumbbells!"
Blogger @12/25, 9:54 PM is absolutely right - Western Alaska is getting lifted right off the face of the earth. Destroyed, crumbled to pieces, culture and tradition of the poor people eradicated and it won't end until the last pollock is caught and sold.
Luckily for the people, the "Western Alaska's Dumbbells" names are all on some form of paper or another. From top to bottom, listed also is this buddy and that buddy and that guy's buddy and that gal's buddy and that cousin or brother or sister or aunt or uncle. All those looking the other way while lining their own pockets will eventually get caught in a gigantic net with no escape portals.
What goes around will come around -proven time after time. In the meantime, we just sit around eating the dry humpies that we're regulated to and praying to the bigger salmon gods that this nightmare will soon end.
Lets not make assumptions and get into the facts of life. The village way of life and the western way of life. We're in the midst of it and will always be. One good thing from the other takes away the good from the other. I say CVRF has done a exceptional job in trying to meet both envirnments. Plus CVRF is the only 100% alaskan owned in all CDQ programs. I believe Morgan deserves the bonus but not to the extend that it be known that owners are in dire situation of needs. Reduce his bonus and give to the owners for heating fuel.
I think CVRF is a Ponzi scheme. I'tll implode without more quota. That's why they're going after everyone else's fish. That's why they pad their salaries as if there is no tomorrow. There might not be.
Come out Larry Cotter and defend your nice fat salary while working for a few hundred people.
There's an old tradition on the Bering Sea coast. In the 1700's a ship wrecked off an Unagan village.
It had a cargo of lutefisk. An elder tasted it and decided it must be poison. His cache was infested with weasels, so he told the village he'd poison them with it.After a few days his friends asked if it worked. He said, "Well, the weasels are gone but now my cache is full of Norwiegans!"
"Lets not....get into the facts of life." Thanks but no thanks for that advice.
The fact is that the Pollock Fishery along with their CDQs are destroying a hundreds year old culture and tradition of living off the salmon. That's a fact that shouldn't be ignored at the magnitude that it is. It is a problem of the people that is being ignored by the people.
The "village way" is losing to the "western way" and in the end, all will be losers expect the ones who've planned ahead and lined their pockets with the CDQ money intended to help the poor living the "village way".
Why not let U of A's Institute of Social & Economic Research run a trawl through the open books of the groups and paint an accurate portrait of their successes or lack thereof. Hold public hearings and make recommendations to the Alaska Legislature & Congress on potential improvements?
WHAT? Be honest for a change???? It won't happen unless Congress enacts some demand for a through and factual audit on the CDQs and their supposed success in administrating the antipoverty funds for thousands of poor and illiterate people in Western Alaska.
The fact that those poor and illiterate people of Western Alaska are losing their culture and tradition of living off salmon should be a right light in itself!
Rural Alaska is not the 3rd world country half of you all think it is. Not all of us are poor or illiterate. CDQs have allowed me and many others a chance to remain in our communities and earn a decent living off of fishing and other job opportunities.
Before painting such broad brushstrokes of us why not read through the reports of CDQ accomplishments instead of focusing on shortcomings.
You sound like a loyal staff member. Loyalty is rewarded.
And you sound like another typical know-nothing. Bravo.
Think about it. Across all the groups the boards theoretically exercise power, but effectively rubber stamp their corprorate staff's plans. Rather than investing the bulk of royalties in the region, they've been diverted to buy fuel guzzling salmon wasting factory trawlers. People at home have actually become poorer as salmon runs wither. Less commercial deliveries, subsistence closures and prosecutions of poor victims of this insane corporate greed as they dare gather a few fish for their families.
It is a real disgrace. The groups reports themselves are ambiguous to a large extent on whether they are really making meaningful gains in improving the living standards of their constituents. The fact that there is no independent fact finding by government should lend suspicion to any public relations disguised as factual analysis by the groups.
There has never been another review of an industry like this in the history of this state or the nation.
Any group analyzing themselves is going give themselves a Five Star review.
What the whole CDQ system is banking on is the ignorance and illiteracy of the thousands of poor people living in Western Alaska. Until the people start speaking up in mass, the bullies holding the pot strings will continue to pat themselves on the back with reviews full of BS.
Since this review is the first of it's kind in a billion dollar industry, it's a great piece for History. It'll be studied for years and the names of the Public Money Hogs will be set in stone forever. That in itself is a one way ticket to Salmon Hell - standing in putrid salmon slime up to the edge of one's nostrils forevermore.
Horray for blogger 12/28 @ 4:25 PM; there is at least one success story from the billions and billions of CDQ dollars being pumped right back into the Bering Sea. I bet he doesn't depend on yearly returns of the Salmon as his main food source.
Thanks to blogger 12/29 @ 8:57 AM for giving me the biggest laugh of the year for saying "the boards theoretically exercise power".
Theoretically(pie in the sky idea) is quite different from actuality.
Actually, the boards excercise the 'rubber stamp' of the workers managing the CDQs for the people. The fear of losing their coveted Board seat with it's easy per diem money and traveling to the city for shopping is too great of a benny for many of the poor men sitting on the Board of Directors.
That and the unrationalized fear of "White Men" taking over the program. Control freaks working any angle they can on the ignorant and illiterate board members from the poor villages even to the point of instilling racist motives. There is no match to this evilness that the CDQs brought to Western Alaska.
White men in Seattle,and Anchorage took ownership of the program long long ago. CDQ employees are relatively undepaid servants with 6 figure salaries compared to the multimillionaires they've minted buying out rustbuckets & inflated quota.
Of course there is no comparison between the Fish Barons who pioneered the pollock fishery and their hell spawn the CDQs. The program is working exactly as expected. In the end, the poor people of Western Alaska are the real losers. Losing their tradition and culture of living off the salmon is already adding a tremendous burden on the poor people. CDQs weren't meant to help them in the first place.
"White men in Seattle and Anchorage took ownership" and those poor, poor underpaid CDQ servants..... These are the kind of myths fed to the illiterate.
The white men never gave up ownership. They gave part of their profits to right a wrong. It's in their favor that the poor CDQ servants want a bigger piece of the pie.
I don't think the CDQs were forced into investing in the pollock fishery. It was a choice made by a handful of men on behalf of thousands of poor people in Western Alaska who didn't understand the complications of the Salmon Bycatch of the Pollock Fishery until at least 15 years after the program was initiated by Congress.
Now those same poor people who are losing their culture and tradtion of living off the salmon are being used as a Human Shield by the poor, poor CDQ servants with one thing in mind, become rich off the backs of the poor. Oppressors and opportunists. CDQ servants. Oppressors and opportunists. CDQ servants my BB!
Little he knows, little he sees. You think you know CDQs.
It's hard not to "know CDQs" when they moved in with the free money monopoly in fisheries in the poorest region of Alaska - Western Alaska Coast. Discrimination, exclusion, bullying, self-enrichment, oppression, opportunists, ..........
I "know CDQs" personally because I'm a victim of their unfair practices.
Proof given. Thank you for puttin your own foot in your mouth.
Go deck boss! Keeping up the news and staying away from his friend Larry Cotter.
It would make a great juxtaposition; the corporate palaces of the elite factory trawlers, and the sprawl of poverty in the villages of their "owners". It's loke a cooperative of slaves owning the plantation that abuses them.
This charade's time is up.
Maybe we need to invite the Myth Busters up to Western Alaska. It's impossible to deal with facts when you have a large population of people unable to reason right from wrong. That's why Western Alaska is being scammed by the big money pollock fishers, CDQs included.
It's a classical case of the fox in the hen house out here in Western Alaska. Self-enrichment scumbags getting rich off the backs of the poor and illiterate. Years and years of brow beating and bullying. Now everyone is moving down to Arizona to be neighbors with the Palins.
There are CDQ conspiracy theorists who have nothing to do but complain their mouths off. What a crock of baloney. They think they know it all
We need to do a honey bucket tour of Anchorage & Seattle. Get some folks from villages still on honey buckets to carry plastic pails & pickets to their remote village regional CDQ and At Sea Processor HQ's
"They're livin' like Kings & all we have is this goddam Honeybucket!"
An anuk bucket is as good a place as any for their contaminated half truths and lies. The bush has been ripped off. The main offices of everything that supposedly represents them is in
Anchorage and Seattle, and getting further in the distance economically daily.
It's the outta sight, outta mind control tactic. The one that is over-used is the "I don't know" - people supposedly 'in the know' not knowing anything. That's how the control freaks like it. They know passive people like the back of their hands. Using the poor to enrich themselves. That era of Alaska politics is coming to an end. The poor are tired of agency workers supposedly acting on their behalf with no progress to show year after year after year. Playing to the ignorance of their stakeholders is a crime against humanity.
CDQs are included in this farce. The only people who know about the real action of the CDQs are the insiders keeping everything to themselves. 20 years is a long time with no progress in site for millions and millions of dollars given to help the thousands of poor people in Western Alaska, the real stakeholders of the program. They are locked out with no relief in site except for the token handouts given as bribes.
It's obvious that this lock, stock and barrel system is breaking down fast. I attribute it to the internet. It's hard to ignore the facts when they are staring you in the face. Another indication is that the control freaks are hiding in their offices ready to cry 'Wolf' and lie their butts off on how they fear the people who they are supposedly mandated to help in the first place. Run away, run away. The tide is turning. Poor people are tired of being used as puppets by hogs and liars.
When little dumb men act like big-shots on the peoples dime, in the end there is nothing to show for their involvement except for indication of self-enrichment then the poor people will rise up and cast them out into the gutters where they belong. It's just a matter of time.
It's happening now. The control freaks support systems are starting to break down. Honest people can't live happily with bullies and liars unless they are also deep into the BS.
I don't even feel sorry for the CDQ cheerleader Jan. 5 @ 6:31 PM. There is and has been a "CDQ Conspiracy" for as long as the program has been around. The Innies kept it quiet for as long as they could, which was about 15 years.
Shucking and jiving like Uncle Tom's to the guys controlling the bag strings. These shuckers and jivers are still shucking and jiving to the agencies, passing out bennies that the common folks know nothing about. It's been a 'suck-up' game for as long as it's old. Not only do the suckers reek of crookedness, they hide behind the agencies with authority to keep the common folks at arms length while they continue to rape the public money like it's a free for all for those in the "know".
Yes, of course the control freaks don't want us to "know it all" because they would end up in prison for a long, long time.
“The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
— William Shakespeare
Western Alaska is full of people who are wiser now that they realize that time and again their trust has been violated by greedy leaders. Endless greed. Endless poverty flowing from it.
Wiser yes but still afraid of the bullies who are in control. People have to hit rock bottom before they wake up and start challenging the bullies. It's coming faster than expected.
"Endless poverty flowing from...Endless greed."
Leaders without empathy, leaders without vision except that which lines their own personal pocket.
Welcome to the political arena of Western Alaska where the Nation's Resource from the Bering Sea is being used as a means to promote oppression to feed the egos of a handful of men who show HATRED for the stakeholders of millions and millions of public dollars in the form of the CDQ program.
Way to go Phillip Lestenkof with your hundreds of thousands in halibut payments. Just checked your IRS reporting. CBSFA board making millions each year. Google their 990s and you will see.
Most of the CDQs transactions are recorded in their IRS filings - those they can claim legit: operation expenses; stakeholder give-aways in the form of small business grants**; salaries; per diem; travel.....
**small business grants starred for questioning. Accountability varies depending on who received the grant. Specific people have to account for every penny while some never pan out. Preferential treatment is discriminatory.
Keep on checking those 990s and you'll see that your neighbor is getting quite a bit more than his/her share while the poorest stakeholders continue to struggle in extreme poverty.
Keep on checking those 990s and you'll see overcompenhension for minimal qualifications and bare minimum production stemming from those over-paid jobs. Highly paid people with not much work involved. It's a scam and these kinds of 'free money' scams are a big drain on our society. We all see it and that's why these people hide in their ivory tower offices. Self-enrichment for minimal production off the backs of the poor. That's oppression and it is against the laws of humanity.
CDQs
IFQs
LLCs
DC needs to check into this blatant misuse of public money.
Now, all would be okay if the IFQs that some CDQs are lapping up like hard candy are assigned to an impoverished village in their region. The impoverished villagers don't know who gets the bennies when an IFQ is bought with their money and an LLC is formed to fish the quota. A handful of men using every angle to enrich themselves off the backs of the poor.
CDQs
IFQs
LLCs
Wake up DC!
The public money CDQs are non-profit corporations belonging to the people of Western Alaska in theory only. The people are not members per say, their community is. A community as a member cannot speak for the community if there are no procedures for the individual village people to follow. See the irony in this set-up?
The village people have been set up to think that their Representative to the CDQ Board of Directors is their link to the money belonging to their community. Yet, there is no set codification or procedure for the common man to follow. All the money is at the beck and call of the Administration. That in inself makes the CDQ Corporations a mockery of the real anti-poverty non-profit corporations in the United States. A 'slapstick' model giving the poor villagers a false impression of their purpose.
Only in the poorest region of Alaska with the highest rate of illiteracy can something like this happen. The majority of the poor, illiterate stakeholders don't know they are being fleeced.
Congress has their work cut out for them if these million dollar non-profit anti-poverty corporations are going to work as intended. Wake-up Congress. Take a closer look at the CDQs and their lack of accountability to the villages with weak representation. Interview the bully victims who sit on the Board of Directors. Interview the common citizens who've been locked out of particpation just for speaking up. Interview the Top Administrators individually and you will see the blantant incompatible personalities and qualifications to manage millions of public dollars.
The villagers themselves need to demand an extensive plan that will address each village and how those villages will receive their rightful share of the benefits. Demand accountability and transparency from the Administration. Demand fair and equal representation from the Administration. Demand sanctions that will ensure all villages will be treated as worthy receiptors of the money intend on their behalf.
Shake the present CDQ structure and the bad apples will fall out into the gutter where they belong. It's in the peoples hand. The Bully Style of Bush Politics does nothing for the people as a whole. It is time to force change in order to give the village people hope for the future.
"The Bully Style of Bush Politics" makes it hard for people with ethics to help guide the destiny of the state.
Oh Alaska, Alaska, crooked state Alaska
How Bright we see thee Plight
The Salmon are crashing,
The Politicians are trashing everything in their sight
Oh Alaska, Alaska, crooked state Alaska
Can't hear the abandoned poor
Billions are flowing with nowhere going except in a pocket or two
Oh Alaska, Alaska, crooked state Alaska
Post a Comment