Fresno got big mad last week when it was revealed that the CEO of Valley Children’s Hospital earned more than $5 million in 2021, Fresnoland’s Omar Shaikh Rashad reported.
Councilmembers Miguel Arias and Garry Bredefeld called executive compensation at the children’s hospital a “disgrace” and an “absolute outrage.”
Four other executives, besides CEO Todd Suntrapak, received more than $1 million in total compensation in 2021, according to hospital tax documents. The records were first published through ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer database.
Those were hard numbers to swallow for some who’ve stood on cold, busy street corners over the years, slinging damp Kid’s Day newspapers to help the hospital raise money.
Especially, Arias said, after learning the hospital also helped Suntrapak purchase a home in the swanky beach town of Carmel-by-the-Sea, described as a “loan for residence as a retention incentive in lieu of other compensation.”
A Fresnoland examination of property records confirmed that Suntrapak bought a $6.5 million home in Carmel in 2022.
A university professor who studies nonprofit hospitals told ABC30 that such loans for top executives aren’t unusual. And Suntrapak’s benefits don’t end there, The Bee’s Robert Kuwada reported over the weekend.
Suntrapak has continued to stay silent and the hospital’s official media responses amounted to a kind of exasperated shrug. Yes, he’s worth it, they said. Isn’t it obvious? After all, Valley Children’s Hospital is an elite hospital.
And that’s true, The Fresno Bee’s Marek Warszawski noted, but also not the point for anyone suddenly questioning who really benefited from all those small donations over the years at places like Panda Express and Save Mart or FoodMaxx.
“We can’t help but connect the mental dots from our small contributions to those exorbitant salaries,” Warszawski wrote.
Suntrapak’s silence probably wasn’t surprising for PR-types, except that he’s never really been shy before.
This isn’t even his first clash with Bredefeld.
During the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Suntrapak criticized Bredefeld and other politicians for demanding that schools reopen in July 2020. He’s spoken out on social issues, too, like the murder of George Floyd.
It’s also not the first time Suntrapak has been the focus of the SJV Sun, the Fresno-area website that first published his salary locally this week. In 2021, Suntrapak weighed in on another COVID debate, this time in Clovis Unified schools, earning the website’s scrutiny.
(And credit where credit is due, if you haven’t listened to the Broeske & Musson interview on KMJ with the SJV Sun’s Alex Tavlian, it’s worth it. Tavlian – no stranger to criticism himself – shows the hospital’s Bay Area PR flack that Fresno residents are, in fact, sophisticated enough to understand that Valley Children’s didn’t simply hand the CEO a bag stuffed with five million $1 bills.)
Wednesday’s news conference was also something of a two-fer for Bredefeld, who didn’t miss a shot at District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp, a trustee on one of the hospital’s boards.
“She should have known better,” Bredefeld said.
Smittcamp didn’t respond to Fresnoland this week, but on the GOP-safe Ray Appleton show she defended Suntrapak and the salary, while saying she didn’t actually get to vote on it. She described Bredefeld’s attack as politically-motivated and “shameful.”
Bredefeld and Smittcamp feuded just last month over Bredefeld’s campaign for the Fresno County Board of Supervisors, which she reportedly called “dirty.”
It will be interesting to see when and where (and if) Suntrapak speaks out, to the news media or anywhere else. Maybe he’ll just put his feet up and wait for the storm to pass at one of Carmel’s fancy “fairytale cottages.”
And maybe hospital CEO salary caps won’t emerge as a campaign issue in 2024, for Bredefeld or anyone else, but Fresno wouldn’t be the first California city to talk about it.
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