SUNY chancellor’s $1M pay package fuels push for scrutiny of NY college heads' raises

New York lawmakers have revived a bill to tighten oversight of raises for public college and university leaders after learning that SUNY Chancellor John King's pay package was hoisted to more than $1 million a year.

The proposal was first made in 2023 by state Sen. James Skoufis of Orange County after SUNY trustees hired King at $750,000 a year in base salary alone, far more than his predecessors had been paid. King started that job two years ago after past stints as U.S. education secretary and New York education commissioner.

Neither the Senate nor the Assembly took action on Skoufis' bill in the last two years. But it may get a fresh look with the belated discovery that SUNY trustees had given King a $125,000 raise and hiked his housing allowance last year, as Politico reported on Monday. (That news spilled out after earlier reporting revealed that Education Commissioner Betty Rosa had quietly gotten $155,000 in pay increases.)

“While New Yorkers bust their asses trying to make ends meet in the state — and his own SUNY students work the night shift to afford their bills — the Chancellor feels he should make nearly four times the salary of the state’s Governor," Skoufis said in a statement on Wednesday. "This is elitist. This is offensive." 

“While New Yorkers bust their asses trying to make ends meet in the state — and his own SUNY students work the night shift to afford their bills — the Chancellor feels he should make nearly four times the salary of the state’s Governor," Skoufis said in a statement on Wednesday. "This is elitist. This is offensive." 

State law already requires salary plans to be submitted to those three people at least 60 days before they take effect. But the trio would hold veto power and have at least 90 days to review the plans under the Skoufis bill.

A SUNY spokeswoman said in a statement that King's increased salary reflected his "outstanding performance" over two years as leader of "the nation’s largest statewide comprehensive system of public higher education." He oversees 64 institutions with a total of 377,000 students enrolled as of last fall.

She noted that even with the raise, King earns less than his peers running state university systems in California, Texas and Maryland, citing total compensation packages of $1 million to $1.3 million a year for those states' higher education leaders.

At a Nov. 12 meeting, SUNY trustees raised King's salary to $875,000 and made his increase retroactive to July 1, which appears to have entitled him to more than four months of back pay, according to a copy of the resolution they approved.

They also hiked his monthly housing allowance to $15,000 from $12,500, which comes to $180,000 over a year. King lives for free in a university-owned house in Albany as part of his contract, but he was given that additional housing stipend for a New York City home when he was hired.

Another benefit in the new deal: King gets two months of "study leave" at full pay.

King did lose one perk in November: he's no longer getting reimbursed up to $4,000 a month to travel to another home in Maryland.

King, who is 50 years old and holds degrees from Harvard, Yale and Columbia, was U.S. education secretary for the last year of the Obama administration, following one year as acting deputy secretary. Before then, he was New York’s education commissioner from 2011 to 2014. 

SUNY trustees extended King's five-year contract by another two years when they approved his raise in November. It now expires in 2030.