Massachusetts Health Connector Staffers Cashing In

July 26--Even as beleaguered Bay Staters struggle to get health insurance through the state's failed Obamacare website, Massachusetts Health Connector brass have been promoting their top managers and handing them hefty taxpayer-funded raises ranging from $10,000 to $22,000, the Herald has learned.

"What I see is not salary," Connector Executive Director Jean Yang told the Herald yesterday, defending the pay hikes and promotions she's doled out to her staff. "What I see is incremental responsibility -- because we had to have our staff members step up on an urgent basis at the most difficult time in the history of this organization."

All told, 11 of the 53 Connector staffers onboard as of last year -- about one in five -- saw a spike in pay of $10,000 or more, according to payroll data released to the Herald after a public records request.

In many cases, the raises amounted to between 21 percent and 24 percent of the staffer's base salary.

The pay bumps include:

--Nearly $22,000 to the current director of IT implementation, boosting his salary to $120,000 from $98,325. Yang said the salary reflects a promotion to a newly created position -- needed because the Connector has only a handful of IT staffers and the workload multiplied from the onslaught of technological problems.

--$18,000 to a senior manager promoted to both the director of business and a technology integration manager -- job titles that didn't previously exist -- which brought his salary to $120,000.

--$17,500 to an external affairs coordinator who was promoted to "manager of external affairs," a 24-percent raise that brought her pay to $90,000.

--$15,000 to a senior manager of external affairs after she was promoted to "director of strategy" -- another newly created post -- that boosted her salary to $120,000.

--Another $15,000 to the supervisor, now "manager," of customer service, that bumped his pay to $85,000.

--Nearly $13,000 to the "deputy director of policy" after she became the "director of policy" -- yet another newly created position -- that saw her salary grow to $91,000.

And more pay hikes are likely on the way. The Connector approved a fiscal 2015 budget that allows for another 3 percent for performance-based raises, provided the agency can successfully relaunch its website by November.

Overall, the number of high-powered director-level positions soared to 13 from 8, Connector payroll records show.

The pay hikes, awarded between November 2013 and May 2014, came amid the state's botched Obamacare rollout.

The Connector's malfunctioning Web portal has continually vexed people desperate to sign up for new health plans.

The portal has already cost taxpayers hundreds of millions as officials scramble to fix it in time for the next round of Obamacare deadlines.

Yang unilaterally approved most of the raises, suggesting they were necessary to retain staff mid-crisis.

"That's what I was thinking about day and night ... how do I hold this team together so we can do what needs to be done urgently, so we don't fall apart," Yang said. "It was just extremely important for people to take on responsibilities that are twice, three times, of their normal workload."

Overall, the Connector staff grew from 53 in fiscal 2014 to 61 in fiscal 2015, and only three employees left.

Among the fresh hires, two were recently brought in to newly created posts -- a director of carrier engagement and an enterprise architect -- each earning a whopping $150,000.

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