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Brenda Bremner Siletz Tribal General Manager Salary: $114,400

Ted Kulongoski Governor of Oregon Salary: $93,600

I recently requested and received documents regarding a grant application submitted by Mike Kennedy, our tribe's Natural Resources Manager. This information is available to all Americans under the Freedom of Information Act. One of these documents, dated August 6th 2008, reports our General Manager's salary this year as $114,400.

That's more than $20,000 higher than the annual salary of Ted Kulongoski, the Governor of Oregon. A list of state governor's salaries reports the Oregon governor's salary as $93,600.

Kulongoski governs a state with a population of 3,747,455 while Brenda Bremner manages a tribe with a population under 5,000. Oregon's state budget is well over 40 billion dollars. Obviously Governor Kulongoski's responsibilities far exceed those of General Manager Brenda Bremner, but she is paid over $20,000 more than the governor.

In fact, Brenda Bremner's salary is higher than that of 22 state governors: Alabama, Hawaii, New Mexico, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Kansas, Idaho, South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Montana, Arizona, Indiana, Louisiana, West Virgina, Oregon, North Dakota, Colorado, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Maine, all pay their governor less than the tribe pays our General Manager Brenda Bremner.

The same grant application lists our Assistant General Manager's salary in 2008 as $96,948. That appears to be the salary Tina Retasket was paid as Assistant General Manager earlier this year. That would mean that Tina Retasket was also making more than the Governor of Oregon when she was Brenda Bremner's assistant.