Extravagant expenses of the head of the NRA criticized by former staff members: NPR

A series of internal documents released by the National Rifle Association over the weekend were released, detailing the sumptuous six-figure clothing spending and travel expenses for CEO Wayne LaPierre.

The revelations prompted board member Allen West to speak. On Tuesday, he announced that he had previously called for LaPierre's resignation and said it "is imperative that the NRA cleans its own house". A second member of the NRA Board of Directors followed suit on his Facebook page writing that it was "time for a new direction".

These developments, combined with a cascade of stories about other incidents of uncontrolled spending within the organization of gun rights, especially former NRA core employees.

They talked to NPR about low wages and retirement problems and a culture of fear within the organization that treated the regular staff in a very different way than its leaders.

The disclosure of these huge costs has been particularly upsetting despite the fact that, according to the documents obtained by NPR, the company has underfunded pensions affecting hundreds of former and current employees, even though LaPierre had achieved 1 , $ 4 million in 2017, according to the latest financial information of the group. .

"For other non-profit organizations, they are better paid than anyone in the field," said Daniel Borochoff, president of Charity Watch, a non-profit oversight organization. "Do they need to pay for it to work well, or are there other leaders that they could hire who could also do the job cheaply?" non-profit organizations must defend. "

Out of more than 600 organizations monitored by Charity Watch, LaPierre is the eighth highest paid non-profit executive in the country. If you exclude hospitals or health professionals, it is the second highest paid, said Borochoff.

This is a level of pay that has been noticed by former staff members of the NRA, who are now expressing themselves publicly.

"I can not think of any other non-profit organization that compensates its executive vice-president for the type of salary and benefits that Mr. LaPierre receives in relation to employees' salaries," wrote in an open letter to the former 13-year-old NRA employee circulated widely in the gun rights community.

Lander added, "I do not understand how a person like Mr. LaPierre sees the people who work for him as his own servants under contract, unless you know the secret handshake, then you are very well paid. , provided to follow blindly not offering any resistance to the leaders of the organization ".

The National Rifle Association has not responded to several requests to comment on this story. But LaPierre retains substantial support from its board of directors.

"Wayne has dedicated his life to defending our freedom, and as leader of the association, he led the RNA through the most incredible and hard-fought victories," said the board member Carolyn Meadows at the annual meeting of the ARN last month. "Wayne will be the first to say that it's not him, that it's about the members."

Meadows was later chosen to be the president of the organization.

Documents raise questions about NRA pension plan

Even though the organization pays high salaries to its senior executives, the future prospects of NRA employees who are entitled to a pension are deteriorating.

NPR obtained a copy of the National Rifle Association's pension documents for 2019 from a source with direct access to these documents. Brian Mittendorf, chair of the accounting department at Ohio State University, helped NPR review these documents.

They show that the NRA's pension obligations rose to about $ 134 million at the beginning of this year, but they had set aside only $ 93 million to meet these obligations.

They also show that the situation of NRA pensions has become more worrying in recent years. The NRA Pension Plan currently has 786 people, of which 223 are currently employed by the organization.

Buried at the bottom of a pension report page, in bullet form, the NRA said to have put in place a gel their pension plan in 2018. This means that even current employees who participate in the plan can no longer accumulate new benefits even if they continue to work for the organization.

"In reality, it's all that an organization can do to reduce retirement benefits without completely terminating its plan," Mittendorf said.

The freeze on benefits for employees participating in the pension plan is in contrast to a $ 3,767,345 supplemental pension payment that LaPierre received in 2015, according to the NRA's public disclosures.

"This indicates that the organization has not set aside enough funds to cover the retirements of its most basic employees," Mittendorf said. "This means that the financial difficulties of the organization put the future of these employees at risk at risk, something should change within the organization to cover them … The people at the top of the hierarchy will be in financial security.This is the base employees who are at risk. "

Complaints about low wages and a "culture of fear"

Former employees said the National Rifle Association had a tough work environment.

"There was a culture of fear," said Vanessa Ross, who worked there from 2008 to 2011, managing the group's disability shooting services. "By the time you raised your head and started asking questions, it was then that I felt that everything was spinning – so it was like I was the outcast. J & rsquo; I was treated as if I were that horrible person, that I was not doing my job properly. "

Ross said she was fired by the NRA after raising questions about the cuts made in the group's handicapped shooting services.

A number of former employees spoke of the struggle to make ends meet with the salary of an ordinary employee of the NRA, a subject that Lander also addressed in his open letter.

"We were terribly underpaid," added Steve Hoback, who participated in the NRA's training programs from 2009 to 2012. He said he was starting at $ 28,000 a year and that he reached $ 32,000 a year after three years of work.

When he left his position, because of frustration over the high compensation of the organization's leadership, he was offered more than double his salary to work on training another. business, he told NPR.

"People at the bottom of the list did not make much money, fundraisers earned money, but not much compared to a typical non-profit organization in DC," Aaron added. Davis, who worked on fundraising at the NRA from 2005 to 2015. "guessing about $ 10,000 less than they would in a comparable position elsewhere."

Ongoing investigations and troubles at the base

Amid all the revelations of high spending, the National Rifle Association is facing the launch of a new investigation by the New York Attorney General and many Congressional investigations into its finances.

And the NRA has to deal with grassroots members, such as Rob Pincus, a gun rights advocate who was among the people who sought to overthrow current leaders at the recent annual meeting of the National Rifle Association.

"They send out money requests saying that they risk going bankrupt in their legal battle with New York.They are living all that drama to say that they need money, so that they spend money for all those things that can not even be justified, "Pincus said. "The employees have been aware of this for a while, but now members are starting to understand that."