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The Los Angeles Times said this morning that it suspects that the election of Jonathan Thomas as chairman of the $3 billion California stem cell agency "will go a long way toward assuring the institute's extinction."
In an editorial, the state's largest circulation newspaper said,
"It always annoys voters to discover that government workers make more than they do, but what especially rankles about Thomas' big paycheck is that his hiring comes at a time when most state agencies are making radical cutbacks and when the institute itself is considering a ballot measure to ask voters for billions in new funding."The editorial is the latest in several negative pieces in the mainstream media about the choice of Thomas, a Los Angeles bond financier, to become chairman. The articles focus primarily on Thomas' $400,000, part-time (80 percent) salary.
"The new head of California's stem cell research agency, which has a staff of 50, not only makes more money than the governor, he makes twice as much as the chief of the National Institutes of Health, which has 17,000 employees. Does that make him overpaid? Not necessarily. But it does make the board that hired him remarkably tin-eared about politics."The editorial did note that "it's possible" that Thomas "could earn his big bucks," given his background in finance, if CIRM is forced to try to sell state bonds privately.
"The state is sinking financially. Cutbacks are being forced across the board. But not at the CIRM....Prior to the LA Times salary story, Pete Shanks of the Center for Genetics and Society of Berkeley, Ca., on June 29 wrapped up the election of Thomas on its Biopolitical Times blog, quoting John M. Simpson of Consumer Watchdog of Santa Monica, Ca. Simpson said that the selection of Thomas is "a public relations disaster from which the stem cell agency will never recover."
"These people live in a different world of 'entitlement' (there’s another word) and 'luxury.' This is just another reason for the people of California to turn off the borrowing money spigot in 2014."