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To: Les H who wrote (214801)	1/15/2003 7:00:39 PM
From: NOW	Respond to of 436258

Nice work if you can find it: New York Times: "WASHINGTON, Jan. 9 — Six months after it was created by Congress, the new board overseeing the accounting profession — the centerpiece of reform legislation after a year of corporate scandal — held its first formal meeting today without a permanent chairman, a senior staff or a final budget. During the meeting, the new board members voted themselves annual salaries of $452,000, or $52,000 more than the pay of the president. (Once it has a chairman, the board said, it plans to pay that official $560,000.) ... The board has been assigned the job of inspecting the auditors of the nation's publicly traded companies, in effect serving as the auditors of the auditors, as one member put it. It is supposed to write and enforce ethics rules and set standards for the profession. ... The members of the accounting oversight board, which will ultimately be financed through assessments on accounting firms and their corporate clients, showed no signs of being financially pinched. After approving their annual pay of $452,000, or more than double the $171,900 pay of cabinet members like the secretaries of state and defense, and the attorney general, the new board ratified a request to borrow $1.9 million from the government to meet its expenses for this month. The new chairman of the accounting board, who will be named once the S.E.C. has a new chairman, will receive an annual paycheck of $560,000, more than triple the $142,500 pay of the chairman of the S.E.C. and nearly three times the $192,600 salary of the chief justice of the United States. Commission and board officials said the salaries were justified to attract the most talented people and to compete with the private sector and organizations like the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which sets accounting rules in the United States, and the industry-sponsored regulators of the major stock markets. The law creating the board instructs it to set the compensation for members and their staffs "at a level that is comparable to private sector self-regulatory, accounting, technical, supervisor, or other staff or management positions." But some lawmakers said the decision to set such pay was excessive and sent the wrong message just as the new board was hobbling toward its creation and the S.E.C. was facing its own financial problems. "It's way too high and really discouraging," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee. "It's a grave mistake." In an effort to retain top employees quickly, the board ratified an agreement to retain Korn/Ferry International, an executive search company, to help find people to fill the seven top staff jobs. The company will be paid $60,000 for each position it helps fill."