The heads of Texas’s pension funds
rank No. 1 and No. 4 on a list of the best-paid state agency
leaders, ahead of managers who run much larger health and
education operations, according to a state auditor’s report.

Yet top investment officials at the $110.3 billion Teacher
Retirement System make more than their boss, Brian Guthrie,
whose $270,000 salary put him fourth among the top 30 agency
leaders, Auditor John Keel said today in a report. The ranking
didn’t include the best-paid managers of state funds.

The pension’s chief investment officer got an annual salary
of $480,000, while the investment-fund director was paid
$330,000, the report shows. In all, it says the salaries of four
investment-related employees exceeded Guthrie’s.

At the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, with a
$31.8 billion budget and 57,000 full-time employees, Executive
Commissioner Tom Suehs got a salary of $230,000, ranking ninth
on Keel’s list. Phil Wilson, a former Luminant Worldwide Corp.
executive put in charge the Texas Transportation Department in
September, was paid $292,500, the second-highest amount among
agency managers, excluding those in investment positions.

Ann Bishop, head of the $22.1 billion Employees Retirement
System, receives $312,000 in salary, making her the best-paid
head of a state agency, according to the report. Paul Ballard,
chief executive officer of the Treasury Safekeeping Trust Co.,
an arm of the comptrollers office that oversees almost $50
billion in assets, came in at No. 3 with a salary of $292,000.

Nine Others

Bishop, who also received a $26,000 bonus in fiscal 2011,
oversees nine more employees whose pay topped the lowest-
salaried manager, the Lottery Commission’s executive director,
at about $185,300 on Keel’s top-30 list. By comparison, Texas
Governor Rick Perry collects a $150,000 annual salary.

Mary Jane Wardlow, a spokeswoman for the pension, declined
to comment on the auditor’s report.

The objective of the study was to “bring about comparable
pay among similar executive-officer positions” in state
government, Keel said in the report. The second-biggest U.S.
state by population has “significant disparities” in what it
pays top managers, he said.

“We usually let these reports speak for themselves,” said
Cody Smith, a spokesman, when asked if Keel would comment on the
study. The Legislature asked for the audit, which identified
salaries by job title without naming the individuals holding the
positions. Keel ranked 21st, with annual pay of $198,000.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Kathy Warbelow in Austin at
kwarbelow@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Stephen Merelman at
smerelman@bloomberg.net.