Despite saying its chief executive officer’s pay was in line with other transportation leaders, the Central Ohio Transit Authority was aware its former and current CEOs were better paid than most in comparable cities, records obtained by The Dispatch show.
At $363,825, the base pay for COTA’s Monica Tellez-Fowler was higher than the leaders of 8 out of 11 transit agencies that COTA compared itself to in January, according to a salary benchmarking report COTA used from the American Public Transportation Association (APTA). COTA initially refused to release the report to The Dispatch before a July 30 article .
Read More: COTA’s highest-paid employees, ranked − and search our database to see more
Both COTA’s current and former CEO each earned more than transit leaders in Dayton, Detroit, Orlando, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Buffalo, Austin and Arlington Heights, Illinois, the newly released report shows. It also shows that COTA has fewer employees than the transit systems in Cleveland, Orlando, Buffalo, Arlington Heights and Austin, which all paid their CEOs less.