Batt Questions Amount Of Severance For Director Quasi-Public Housing Agency Refusing To Release Details

Republican Gov. Phil Batt, adamant about his campaign to check excessive growth in the state labor force and its payroll, wants information on what he fears was an excessive severance package for former Idaho Housing Agency Director Wayne Mittleider.

But Housing Agency officials, while acknowledging that Mittleider did receive a cash settlement when he was replaced earlier this year, have declined to release details of the settlement.

“The terms and conditions of Mr. Mittleider’s settlement are confidential, which is consistent with normal employment practices,” the agency said in a statement issued on Thursday.

The statement was prompted by inquiries from The Idaho Statesman.

The agency provides financing for housing for lower-income families. Mittleider was being paid more than $100,000 when Batt replaced him with former state Sen. Rod Beck of Boise. Mittleider had also received large bonuses in the past.

Batt ordered the salary reduced, but because of comparably high salary levels for others in the agency, Beck is being paid about $96,000 a year, still one of the highest salaries in state government.

The governor, along with House Speaker Mike Simpson, wants the details of the severance package and has expressed concern over the agency agreeing to keep them confidential.

“While a reasonable amount of severance pay is a generally accepted method of doing business, rumor has it that Mr. Mittleider’s severance package is quite excessive,” Batt wrote in a letter to Michael McMurray, chairman of the agency’s governing board.

The agency is financed through revenues generated by the sale of bonds. Its connection with the state is that the bonds are backed by the state sales tax should they ever go into default.

And because of that connection, Simpson said he believes information on the severance package should be public.

But McMurray defended the package as a standard practice in a financial institution, saying the board was “comfortable that the conditions of severance to assist Wayne in new employment are within commercial bounds.”