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Even as passenger traffic has remained down sharply from a year ago, the agency that runs T.F. Green Airport has just paid 41 non-union employees nearly $450,000 in discretionary pay.

Kevin A. Dillon, president of the Rhode Island Airport Corporation, described the money as "pay for performance" and said it would be wrong to call it a bonus. The payments are a portion of an employee's salary that can be withheld if the employee's work or the airport's financial performance isn't up to snuff.

Dillon decides whether the employee receives the pay and how much it is, except in his own case, where the Airport Corporation's board decides. "It does not, in any case, exceed the salary range that they're assigned," he said.

Citing the privacy of public employee job performance, Dillon declined to release a list of who received how much of the discretionary pay. He provided a list of job titles subject to the discretionary pay rules. They include the airport's lawyer, chief financial officer and human resources director, as well as secretaries, a paralegal and top brass at the airport's police and fire departments.

The payments were included in paychecks distributed Friday.

Though most of the months since mid-summer have shown passenger traffic declines of 8 percent or more compared to the previous year, the discretionary payments were based on the airport's financial performance during the budget year that ended June 30, according to Dillon. He called that one of the best year's in the Airport Corporation's history.

Although the Airport Corporation is a state agency, it gets no money from the state general fund. "Taxpayers pay nothing for this airport. We are a self-sustaining enterprise," Dillon said. That means the discretionary pay does not affect the state's cash-strapped finances, he added. "No impact on the state budget whether this was paid or not paid."

 Tags  airport public payroll Rhode Island Airport Corporation

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