Analysis: Follow the Money - No Wonder Corporate Welfare Bosses So Defensive

The website AnnArbor.com reports that Michael Finney, the newly-appointed director of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, will get an annual salary of $250,000, in addition to "deferred compensation equal to 18 percent of his salary in lieu of a retirement plan.”

The online publication compared his salary to what the directors of regional arms of the state’s corporate welfare bureaucracy earned in recent years, including Saginaw Future Inc.’s JoAnn T. Crary ($198,939 in 2009), Kalamazoo-based Southwest Michigan First’s Ron Kitchens ($439,859 in 2009) and Grand Rapids-based The Right Place’s Birgit Klohs ($282,320 in 2008).

Prior to his MEDC appointment Finney was the director of the Ann Arbor branch of this establishment, where according to AnnArbor.com he was paid $258,423 in 2008.