Pastorek pay deal gets huge support

• By MICHELLE MILLHOLLON
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: May 17, 2008 - Page: 1A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Legislators overwhelmingly approved state Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek’s $355,000 pay package Friday.

However, Louisiana lawmakers criticized the state’s top school board for making some of Pastorek’s performance objectives contingent on the Legislature’s approval of $14 million in state funds for literacy efforts. The legislators hastened to add that their criticism was not directed at Pastorek personally.

A day earlier, the House refused to add the $14 million to House Bill 1, the budget legislation.

“The accountability falls back on us … if we don’t fund it,” state Sen. Eric LaFleur, D-Ville Platte, said Friday.

State education officials tried to reassure lawmakers that they will use the objectives in deciding every year whether to give Pastorek a 6 percent pay raise.

“We’re going to hold him accountable,” said Penny Dastugue of Mandeville, a member of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

The Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget spent 90 minutes discussing the job performance objectives that they ordered the BESE to devise.

They reviewed the components of Pastorek’s pay package: an annual base salary of $271,611, a housing allowance of $54,000, a yearly car allowance of $30,000, and about $50,000 in retirement benefits.

They talked about the state’s poor rankings in education.

Finally, Senate President Joel Chaisson II, D-Destrehan, told the committee it was time to vote and made a motion to approve the contract.

The committee voted 22-4 to approve the package, which gives Pastorek a nearly $50,000 pay raise.

“Thank you, and I appreciate the confidence you have in me,” Pastorek told legislators.

Lawmakers told education officials last month to come up with concrete performance objectives for the sizable pay package.