Siletz.Net

In his campaign letter this year, Tribal Council member Reggie Butler wrote:

The Human Resource Department for Tribal Administration did a salary adjustment study and recommended salary increases that resulted in an increase of up to $20,000.00 for certain employees. The Human Resource Director received a $15,000 raise. There was no criteria to justify raises of this magnitude.

In response to a request I made under the Freedom of Information Act in 2008, I received documentation from a grant application submitted by our tribe. You can download a PDF copy of the entire document (3.16 MB) here. Many tribal salaries from 2006 and 2008 are disclosed in the application. Here are the salary increases for General Manager Brenda Bremner and her top staff:

Position	2006 Salary	2008 Salary	% Increase	2008 Employee
General Manager	$103,255	$114,400	11%	Brenda Bremner
Certified Public Accountant	See Note (1)	$99,341	See Note (1)	Gregg Gubuan
Assistant General Manager	$56,062	$96,948	73%	Tina Retasket
Attorney	$81,612	$88,546	8.5%	Cathern Tufts
Administrative Manager	$72,947	$82,430	13%	Sharon Edenfield
Tribal Accountant	See Note (1)	$81,162	See Note (1)	Randy Wilson
Human Resources Manager	$46,745	$69,712	49%	Michele Rowan
Program Managers See Note (2)	$105,616	$134,707	27%	Bev Youngman Rebecca Williams

Notes:

(1) The documentation lists two Tribal Accountants in 2006 with a combined salary of $76,141. In 2008 only one tribal Accountant is listed, with a salary of $81,162. A Certified Public Accountant with a salary of $99,341 is listed in 2008 but not in 2006. It appears that the combined salaries of the top two accountants working for Bremner have increased from $76,141 to $180,503 - a whopping 137% increase in just two years.

(2) The salaries given are the combined salaries of the two Program Managers. The average salary of of a Program Manager went from $52,808 to $67,353 from 2006 to 2008.

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Setting aside Tribal Attorney Cat Tufts and the two accountants listed, the combined salaries of the top managers listed here went from $384,625 in 2006 to $498,197 in 2008. That's a thirty percent increase in salary in two years for Brenda Bremner's top managers.

Have any of these managers ever earned a comparable salary outside the tribe? I seriously doubt it. And this goes on while our businesses are losing money hand over fist and our casino revenues are stagnating. Casino workers, the people who actually make money for the tribe, are not even getting cost of living adjustments. But somehow it's a Golden Age for managers.

Keep in mind that the salaries listed above were reported in April 2008. The Tribal Council has recently approved another round of big raises for 2009 on top of all this. Will Brenda Bremner's managers get another 15% in 2009? Stay tuned.

Reggie Butler also wrote:

The Siletz Tribal Business Corporation (STBC) is still floundering. The Tribal Council hired an Economic Development Director, nearly one year ago, who reorganized by increasing staff salaries. The Director is also hiring new staff right in the middle of a recession. Decisions of this type have ensured that the Tribe and the Tribal Businesses stay in the red even though STBC is receiving approximately three million dollars per year of Chinook Winds revenues.

So it seems safe to assume that STBC, under Dave Tovey, provides the same kind of gravy train for managers that we see in Brenda Bremner's administration.

The following salaries for 2008 were submitted by General Manager Brenda Bremner and Chairman Dee Pigsley signed off on them:

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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.