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Malcolm Gladwell and Wendy Kaminer

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"America's Most Wanted"

By Malcolm Gladwell
Posted Thursday, June 11, 1998, at 2:56 PM ET

Okay. Time to go on to irritating thing number three. The head of the Long Island Utility--which is owned, in part, by the state--just got a $42 million dollar buyout package [See NY Times piece]. The critical detail here is that the biggest chunk of that $42 million--$37 million--is a lump sum payment "of pension benefits that under other circumstances might have been spread out for many years." He gets that much because he managed to get his pension pegged to his highest salaried year, not the average annual salary. The other key quote: "after Mr. Catacosinos agreed in 1984 to run Lilco, where he had been a director since 1978, he said in many interviews that he took the job because he wanted to give something back to the community." Oh, and one other thing, he said he really deserved $63 million, and only settled reluctantly for the $47 mill. this is for running a utility that is considered one of the worst big utilities in the country. Actually saying I'm irritated is inaccurate. I'm merely curious, at this point. How is it that you can arrange a $47 million buyout for doing a bad job for a public utility? This is one of those instances where you really wish the Times had had its reporters spend a month on the story, instead of a day. Also, how big of a scumbag is this guy? Can we quantify what, exactly, he actually gave back to the community while he was running Lilco into the ground? And--here's the big question--if he's worth $47 million, what am I worth? My problem is not that some people should get lots of money for doing things. That seems to be the way the world works. Nor is it that he managed to somehow scam his way into $47 million. Lord knows, that's happened before. I just don't want him to get away without some sense of major public embarrassment. Why wasn't this story--and his picture--on the front page? Can we run him out of the state? Shouldn't there be a segment on him on "America's Most Wanted" so that everytime someone spots him on the street they can scream at him?

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