SC’s Santee Cooper to raise pay for 5 leaders after cutting other senior management jobs

Five Santee Cooper senior management employees may get large pay raises, including one executive who could receive a $110,000 pay bump, in order to closely compete with other utilities, officials said.

The pay increases could cost a total of $302,000, and include the state-owned utility’s chief financial officer, chief generation officer, chief customer officer, chief audit executive and its general counsel.

How much each employee will receive is ultimately up to Santee Cooper President and CEO Mark Bonsall after he conducts performance reviews. Santee Cooper’s board on Monday authorized the maximum pay for the employees.

In recent years, Bonsall has halved the number of senior management positions at the utility, which directly or indirectly supplies power to 2 million South Carolinians.

“I did converge a lot of the functions as a result of that reorganization down onto these five people,” Bonsall said.

“So I put more responsibilities on each of these positions and their pay at this point does not match that.”

Bonsall said the utility is saving more money from the job cuts than what is being spent on the raises.

Bonsall said all five of the employees who got raises were below the midpoint of the market rates for similar-sized utilities, according to an analysis done for Santee Cooper. None of the employees received any incentive-based pay, Bonsall said.

“From a fundamental standpoint, equity and fairness indicates we’ve got to treat our employees fair,” Santee Cooper Board Member David Singleton said. “But well beyond that, we’ve got a fiduciary duty to set compensation levels so that we can retain and attract top quality folks.”

Here’s who potentially will get pay raises:

▪ Ken Lott, chief financial and administration officer; $530,000 from $420,000 — 26% raise

▪ Monique Washington, chief audit and risk officer; $270,000 from $216,000 — 25% raise

▪ Thomas Curtis, chief generation officer $315,000 from $261,000 — 20.6% raise

▪ Pamela Williams, chief public affairs officer and general counsel; $455,000 from $408,800 — 11% raise

▪ J. Michael Poston, chief customer officer; $370,000 from $333,000 — 11% raise