Vilsack gives Blouin $59,000 - from Radio Iowa Blog

I know Tom Vilsack's thinking about the presidency right now, which may be fortunate because I'm not sure he would be re-elected governor with the news that came out of the statehouse today. Vilsack paid former DED director Mike Blouin a $59,000 "retention" bonus last year according to our reporter who sat through the Legislative Oversight Committee hearings today. You'll recall Blouin resigned in July to run for governor.

Vilsack's communications director defended the bonuses paid to Blouin and a thousand others in state government by saying: "a number of these employees who received this sort of extra pay/recruitment/retention bonuses, they have special skills...for instance former director Blouin took over a $90,000 pay cut to become the director of economic development under this adminsitraton and he helped spur many economic opportunities for this state." This statement comes at the same time the Vilsackers had to acknowledge another report -- this one from the DED -- which shows roughly 8000 jobs have been "created or retained" by companies getting Values Fund grants -- not the 25,000 that Vilsack and Blouin have repeatedly claimed had been "created or retained." In a statement issued this afternoon, Vilsack said another 17,000 jobs were "in the pipeline."

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Let's remember that Blouin 'made' $181,000 a year BEFORE travel and incidental expenses (around $77,000)as Director of the IDED that's 2 1/2 times more than our current Governor makes. His wife also makes $49,000 working for the Governor's office.

Nussle will probably come up with some spin on it. Like "I won't pay bonuses. My people will work for what we pay them."
I guess a Democrat getting a bonus is better than a Republican selling favors to the highest bidder. Corruption probably pays better and it is "market" based.

If the Governor has so much extra cash laying around at the end of the fiscal year why doesn't he give 'bonuses' to the County Governments that he starved with his 'Reinventing Iowa' bullshit a couple of years back. I"m all for people being paid what they are worth, so put it in their contract in the beginning of the year and don't backdoor a bunch of cash to them and have it revealed in the DMR six months later. WTF was Vilsack thinking? Why give Blouin the extra $60,000 as he's walking out the door to run for Governor and call it a 'retention bonus'? Did it retain the guy? NO, he left to run for Governor like he said he was going to do....but he kept the cash ;)

At a campaign visit in Marshalltown in February, Blouin was asked about the bonus he and others recieved. Blouin played it off as a a way to attract talent to state government and compete with the business world.

I kind of see his point, but I would rather have the salary set at a decent rate instead of the governor handing out $ to whomever he thinks deserves it.

Blouin made almost 3x what our Governor makes. Now, I'm all for paying a decent salary for individuals who help Iowa prosper, but was the $130,000 + 59,000 + 77,000 in TAX PAYER dollars worth the Iowa Values Fund? It seems all we did was buy into the 'Greed is Good' Gordon Gecko concept. How about civic responsibility and 'How much freaking money does one man need if he REALLY wants to assist his state in being successful'? (And let's not forget the $49,000 his wife was making as well. Together they made more than our Gov. and Lt. Gov. combined).