Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) suggested on Tuesday that Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards was overpaid when Richards testified before Congress regarding continued government funding of the organization.
But to think that Richards is paid too much is to be ignorant of the (quite publicly available) facts.
Richards' salary was about $425,000 last year, with a total compensation of just over $590,000. That's significantly less than what the heads of comparably-sized nonprofits usually make.
The New York Times crunched the numbers for similarly large nonprofit health care providers (mostly hospitals) as well as for large nonprofits in general:
Ms. Richards’s pay is similar to that of a chief executive of a hospital with revenue a little more than a tenth of Planned Parenthood’s — about $151 million, according to Dr. Jha’s analysis of data from Guidestar, a company that analyzes nonprofits’ annual tax filings ... In Guidestar’s report on nonprofit pay, among the 3,335 organizations in its highest budget category — nonprofits bringing in more than $50 million — average compensation is $689,973, about 17 percent more than Ms. Richards earns in total compensation.
The real question is whether anyone should care that Richards makes less than the average president of a large nonprofit.
Planned Parenthood has a symbolic importance as a provider of low-cost health care to women who might otherwise have nowhere to turn. Should it also be an organization whose female executives are paid more than most? That would also give it symbolic importance. But that is not the organization’s mission.
Planned Parenthood is one of the most controversial nonprofits around. Clinics and providers are violently attacked on a fairly regular basis. Richards probably deserves hazard pay above and beyond the average salary.
Then again, despite the controversy, every dollar that Richards doesn't make is a dollar Planned Parenthood can use for something else related to its mission. And that's almost certainly a good thing.