Kaliope Parthemos, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s new chief of staff, is being paid $6,000 a year less than her male predecessor.

KALIOPE PARTHEMOS PAID $172K,
REPLACING MAN WHO GOT MORE
DESPITE DOING IDENTICAL WORK

4th chief of staff for mayor in as many years

CITY OFFICIALS ARE ‘GROSSLY OVERPAID’
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
These days whenever a woman gets paid less than a man for doing the same job, questions of sexual discrimination inevitably rear their ugly head.

It happened a week ago when New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson was abruptly fired by Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr.

Now it’s apparently happening in Baltimore — with a high-ranking female staffer in city government getting paid 3.4 percent less per year than her male predecessor.

The Times’ Abramson was allegedly paid less than former Executive Editor Bill Keller, who preceded her, according to figures based on salary plus pension benefits.

However, according to Sulzberger, it turned out that Abramson’s total financial package was lower than Keller’s only because she had worked at the Times less than 17 years, whereas he had been there for more than 30.

And she had been executive editor less than three years, whereas he had held the top job for eight.

In addition, Sulzberger said, Abramson’s final full-year’s salary in the top slot was considerably higher than Keller’s, leading some to question the adjustment for three years’ worth of inflation, and whether discrimination on the basis of sex had in fact actually occurred.

Keller retired as executive editor in 2011 and continued as an op-ed columnist for the Times until this year.

A week ago Friday, when Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake appointed longtime friend and confidante Kaliope Parthemos to succeed Alexander Sanchez as her chief of staff — the Mayor’s fourth in as many years — the issue was again raised in some quarters in Baltimore.

Why was Parthemos getting paid $6,000 less per year than her outgoing male counterpart?

Voice of Baltimore put the question to Parthemos early Tuesday in an email which has yet to be answered. She also failed to return a morning telephone call seeking a response to the question.

Ousted New York Times Executive Editor Jill Abramson, center, shown here in procession Monday at Wake Forest University, told graduates who have “been dumped… or… know the disappointment of losing or not getting some- thing you badly want…, [to] show what you are made of.”

She’s “not available right now,” VoB was told. “But leave your name and number” and she’ll get back to you.

Sources inside City Hall tell Voice of Baltimore that Parthemos personally asked the Mayor to pay her less than Sanchez in order to “show fiscal restraint,” at a time when many are questioning the high salaries being paid to government officials, including those of Baltimore City.

Absent a response from Parthemos, however, it remains unclear how less than 3.5 percent of a $178,000 salary can be considered a show of “fiscal restraint.” Parthemos’s salary is $172,000.

Despite getting high marks for her experience and capability — “Kaliope is a very tough, pragmatic manager,” City Council Vice President Edward Reisinger told the Baltimore Sun — Parthemos and other city officials are “grossly overpaid,” according to at least one City Hall insider who asked not to be identified by name.

Still, on the national level, President Obama has pledged to bring an end to discrimination of all types, specifically singling out financial bias toward women, and blaming Republicans for exacerbating the disparity, thereby causing some to characterize the reduced Parthemos pay grade by a Democratic mayor as hypocritical.

In Baltimore City, Republicans are even more scarce, if not nonexistent, than in the Obama White House: There hasn’t been an elected member from the GOP in city government since the mid-1930s, with the exception of Theodore R. McKeldin, who was Mayor for single terms in the 1940s and 1960s.

Another pundit said it was “unacceptable for a woman mayor” to pay her female assistants less than she pays their male counterparts, regardless of the reason.

“The Mayor is a woman; a woman to a woman,” the critic said, referring additionally to Rawlings-Blake’s near-lifelong relationship to Parthemos, whom she met and became friends with in grade school.

“It’s unconscionable. It’s just not right.”
 
alforman@voiceofbaltimore.org