A few days ago I described an intent by San Francisco Supervisors to legislate the pay of nonprofits that did business with the city.
I argued that nonprofit boards should be the only folks who have the right to determine what salary is best for their exec with a number of reasons at play to determine what "best" is. While I believe governments can certainly determine that they will not give grants or do business with nonprofits if their execs are making certain salaries or their exec salaries are too high in relationship to the remaining employees, they do not have the authority of determining what is a right and fair salary (not totally socialist or even communist are we). And of course, if the legislature set salaries, they would also have to set benefits and they would have to come up with the money to pay salaries and benefits. Bottom line, if it's not their employees, they can't set the salaries - whether for a nonprofit or a for-profit.
Well, good news, at least for the moment. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
"The legislation, passed 6-5 by the Board of Supervisors, will now require city-funded nonprofits to report to the city only once a year and detail their director's salary, and how much of it was paid by the city.
"The proposal by Supervisor Jake McGoldrick originally sought to limit salaries and benefits for executives to six times the total compensation of their lowest-paid full-time employee. McGoldrick said the intent was to urge nonprofit leaders to think about raising wages for workers on the front lines and to ensure city funds are not spent excessively on executives' pay."
Maybe, just maybe, the intent was good, but......