Administrators
Dear Rowan University,
This is a request for public records made under OPRA and the common law right of access. I am not required to fill out an official form. Please acknowledge receipt of this message.
Records requested: Please supply the following data on Rowan administrators
a) Names of all administrators with titles of President, Provost, Dean, and each and every Vice President including but not limited to Assistant VP, Associate VP, Executive VP.
b) Exact title of each
c) FY22-23 and 23-24 Salary of each
d) Any additional salary paid during each fiscal year including the exact reason for extra salary paid (bonus, overtime, etc...)
Yours faithfully,
Rowan Faculty 4 Transparency
Good afternoon,
We are in receipt of your August 28, 2023 OPRA request. Pursuant to OPRA, a response from Rowan University is due within seven (7) business days or September 7, 2023 in this case. You requested:
a) Names of all administrators with titles of President, Provost, Dean, and each and every Vice President including but not limited to Assistant VP, Associate VP, Executive VP..
b) Exact title of each
c) FY22-23 and 23-24 Salary of each
d) Any additional salary paid during each fiscal year including the exact reason for extra salary paid (bonus, overtime, etc...)
Rowan can generate a report which provides the base salaries and titles (a-c above) at no cost.
Your request also included "additional salary." Reviewing for non-compensation reports etc. requires extensive additional time and costs to coordinate with a few departments, researching individual vouchers, reviewing the information and creating a new document. Under these circumstances, OPRA allows public agencies to impose special service charges whenever the nature, format, manner of collation, or volume of a government record embodied in the form of printed matter to be inspected, examined, or copied pursuant to this section is such that the record cannot be reproduced by ordinary document copying equipment in ordinary business size or when fulfilling a request requires an extraordinary expenditure of time and effort. See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5.
OPRA mandates that the requestor (you) has the opportunity to review and object to the charge prior to it being incurred. See N.J.S.A. 47:1A-5.c. It is estimated that this request will take between 8-10 hours at $25 per hour for a total between $200-$250. Once we have your approval and payment of $250, we will proceed with getting everything together. Please note that we will not produce any information or begin any work until payment is received. In addition, Rowan will need an additional 10 business days, at least, after receiving your approval and payment to work on your request. We will provide a refund if the project is completed sooner than expected.
As stated above, if you want to limit your request to base salary and title, Rowan can produce this without costs or fees.
Please advise as to how you wish to proceed. Feel free to reach out to me to discuss any questions or concerns.
Thank you,
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
OPRA Coordinator
Office of General Counsel
Rowan University | 201 Mullica Hill Rd.| Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701
[email address] |856-256-5110
Dear Feld, Lorra Arsinoe,
As usual, Rowan wants to charge the public and HIDE information about the money paid to administrators in excess of their salaries which is obviously significant. We will report to the press the fact that Rowan will NOT provide the millions of dollars in bonuses that it pays administrators unless the public PAYS for this information. Nothing but a clear indication that Rowan is NOT transparency. We will NOT pay Rowan for such but we will clearly make the press aware of such a clear moral violation.
And thus we will limit our request to base salary and title and make it clear that Rowan cant afford $250 to comply with such a request but can pay millions in bonuses to administrators like yourself. Houshmand alone received a bonus of $88,841 last year. See Chronicle of Higher Education Presidential Salaries at https://www.chronicle.com/article/presid...
Truly disgraceful.
Yours sincerely,
Not Ali Houshmand
Good afternoon,
I apologize for the delay in getting back to you. I wanted to relay your
concerns to the appropriate people to see if they can provide more
clarification to help us come to a resolution. The issue with complying
with your request is that it is very large in scope. You requested
“additional salary paid” (bonus, overtime, etc.) and the reason for the
payment for everyone on your list. For that additional information, Rowan
will have to review each of individual administrators’ pay histories,
including whether they received any vouchers (eg travel expenses) or
additional pay. The review of the additional records is labor intensive
and not confined to HR records/payroll records but would include other
records from multiple other departments. For example, some administrators
receive a housing allowance because they reside in Glassboro or Stratford.
Also, there are employees in these identified groups who received
additional salary for work on grants.
If you want to clarify what you are specifically looking for as
“additional salary paid” or if you wanted to limit the category of people,
Rowan may be able to provide the data without extra cost. For example, a
list of bonus payments would not require a fee. We still plan on providing
the base salaries and titles at no cost.
It is our hope that we can find some common ground and work this out.
Please let us know how you want Rowan to proceed.
Thank you,
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
OPRA Coordinator
Office of General Counsel
Rowan University | 201 Mullica Hill Rd.| Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701
[1][email address] |856-256-5110
Get [2]Outlook for iOS
════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
From: Not Ali Housh <[OPRA #50530 email]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 29, 2023 11:08:38 AM
To: Feld, Lorra Arsinoe <[email address]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: OPRA request - Administrators Salaries
Dear Feld, Lorra Arsinoe,
As usual, Rowan wants to charge the public and HIDE information about the
money paid to administrators in excess of their salaries which is
obviously significant. We will report to the press the fact that Rowan
will NOT provide the millions of dollars in bonuses that it pays
administrators unless the public PAYS for this information. Nothing but a
clear indication that Rowan is NOT transparency. We will NOT pay Rowan
for such but we will clearly make the press aware of such a clear moral
violation.
And thus we will limit our request to base salary and title and make it
clear that Rowan cant afford $250 to comply with such a request but can
pay millions in bonuses to administrators like yourself. Houshmand
alone received a bonus of $88,841 last year. See Chronicle of Higher
Education Presidential Salaries at
[3]https://nam11.safelinks.protection.outlo...
Truly disgraceful.
Yours sincerely,
Not Ali Houshmand
Dear Feld, Lorra Arsinoe,
So typical of Rowan and lawyers to try too negotiate an OPRA request.
This is not a negotiation.
You first blackmailed us and want us to pay $250 for the records and now want to provide only partial information on the millions that Rowan administrators make in bonuses.
Produce the salary of each and every administrator and then ask payroll for the final amount of each administrator on their W-2 which will obviously be much higher than the actual annual salary. We can do the math and expose Rowan from there.
Yours sincerely,
Not Ali Housh
Good evening,
I forwarded the finalized request to payroll and HR. Both departments have starting working on providing Rowan's response. Each department asked for a one week extension since they just received the finalized request on Tuesday due to the holiday. OPRA allows custodians to seek extensions of time beyond the seven (7) business day deadline for legitimate reasons as long as the requestor is notified in writing, within the statutorily mandated seven (7) business days and an anticipated deadline date upon which the records will be provided. The length of the extension must be reasonable under the circumstances. In this case, we are seeking a one week extension until September 14, 2023.
I plan on sending you the reports as soon as I get them. This may mean that you will get the reports at different times. Please let me know if you prefer to have them sent together.
Also, we are assuming that you are seeking salaries for 2023-2024. Please advise if this is not the case.
Thank you,
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
OPRA Coordinator
Office of General Counsel
Rowan University | 201 Mullica Hill Rd.| Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701
[email address] |856-256-5110
Dear Feld, Lorra Arsinoe,
The original request CLEARLY stated FY22-23 and 23-24.
Not sure why it needs to be repeated.
Extension granted to 9/14.
Yours sincerely,
Not Ali Housh
[1]Mail icon
[2]Mail icon
This is a secure message
How to open
To read this message on desktop, open the
[3]Desktop icon securedoc_20230908T171245.html attachment in a web
browser.
To read this message on a mobile device, forward this
[4]Mobile icon message to [email address] to receive a mobile
login URL.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
[5]Need Help?
Contact the sender directly if you are not sure about the validity of
this message.
Copyright © 2011-2023 Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All
rights reserved.
References
Visible links
5. https://res.cisco.com/websafe/help?topic...
[1]Mail icon
[2]Mail icon
This is a secure message
How to open
To read this message on desktop, open the
[3]Desktop icon securedoc_20230911T111415.html attachment in a web
browser.
To read this message on a mobile device, forward this
[4]Mobile icon message to [email address] to receive a mobile
login URL.
══════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════
[5]Need Help?
Contact the sender directly if you are not sure about the validity of
this message.
Copyright © 2011-2023 Cisco Systems, Inc. and/or its affiliates. All
rights reserved.
References
Visible links
5. https://res.cisco.com/websafe/help?topic...
Good morning,
As per my below email, attached are the reports reformatted in Word.
Unless I hear otherwise, I will assume that you are able to access the reports and close the file.
Thank you,
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
OPRA Coordinator
Office of General Counsel
Rowan University | 201 Mullica Hill Rd.| Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701
[email address]|856-256-5110
Good morning,
Please accept this as Rowan's completed response to your August 25, 2023 OPRA request wherein you sought the salary and the final amount of the W-2s for "all administrators with titles of President, Provost, Dean, and each and every Vice President including but not limited to Assistant VP, Associate VP, Executive VP". As you may know, OPRA requires a response within seven business days, in this case September 7, 2023. Due to the nature of the request and a holiday, Rowan needed an extension until September 14, 2023 to provide its response. The departments were able to complete the reports a little early so the response is being provided today, September 13, 2023. Attached please find a report that provides the salaries and the W2 of all administrators with titles of President, Provost, Dean, as well as each and every Vice President including but not limited to Assistant VP, Associate VP, and Executive VP at Rowan University for 2022-2023 and 2023-2024. As you may notice, the W2 information does not coincide with the base salaries due to W2 reflecting calendar year and base salary reflecting fiscal year.
I believe this is a full response to your OPRA request and Rowan will close this request unless you advise otherwise.
If you have any questions and/or would like to discuss this matter further, please do not hesitate to reach out to me at any time.
Thank you,
Arsinoe Feld, Esq
OPRA Coordinator
Office of General Counsel
Rowan University | 201 Mullica Hill Rd.| Glassboro, NJ 08028-1701
[email address]|856-256-5110