Coaches, Doctor Top State?s Highest-Paid Workers List

(Click here (PDF) to see the list of the region’s highest-paid state employees.)

John Pelphery, who started work earlier this year as the new head basketball coach for the University of Arkansas, is in rarefied company: one of three state employees who yearly makes $1 million or more.

Pelphrey’s base salary, $750,000, is more than twice that of the Razorbacks’ head football coach, Houston Nutt. But Nutt’s $329,644 salary is supplemented by $880,000 in endorsements, media deals and other money routed through the Razorback Foundation.

Pelphrey’s supplemental income is listed by the UA as $450,000, for a total compensation package that’s almost $10,000 less than Nutt’s total.

Pelphrey’s contract, however, reportedly includes incentives that could push it as high as $1.95 million in the unlikely event his team won the Southeastern Conference regular-season championship, the SEC tournament and went on to win the NCAA tournament.

Dr. Robert “Jake” Jaquiss got a $100,000 raise this year, bringing his total compensation as a professor of cardiovascular surgery at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock to $1.1 million.

But Jaquiss’ salary (not included in the list on p. 28) has dropped from second to third among all state employees with the arrival of Pelphrey.

The Northwest Arkansas Business Journal’s annual ranking of the highest-paid state employees is divided into two lists: UAMS employees and all other state agencies.

That’s because the physicians on staff at UAMS, many of whom are also contracted to treat patients at Arkansas Children’s Hospital, have a salary scale completely different than the rest of state government and for that reason UAMS employees were deliberately omitted from the annual rankings in this publication.

The complete list of UAMS employees is available online at arkansasbusiness.com.

Still, most of the most highly paid state employees work for institutions of higher learning. Ken James, director of the Arkansas Department of Education, is the most highly paid state employee who doesn’t work for a university. His salary of $212,770 puts him at No. 26 on the general state employees list (also available online).

However, in the Northwest Arkansas-specific list, the top six state salaries are paid to coaches : Houston Dale Nutt, John Pelphrey, Tom Collen, Reggie Herring, Dave Van Horn and David Lee, respectively. Their total compensation packages range from $1.2 million to $300,000.

Distinguished professor Vijay K. Varadan is the first academic to make the list with a salary of $292,000. The Northwest Arkansas-specific list includes the salaries of 90 individuas who make $145,000 or more and represents total compensation of $19.2 million.

The 200 entries on the general state employees list represent total combined compensation of more than $36.4 million, up 7 percent from last year.

All the information was provided by state agencies – the Department of Finance & Administration, the Department of Higher Education, the University of Arkansas and the Arkansas State Highway & Transportation Department – in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.