WASHINGTON - While other bank regulators readily acceded to the American Banker's request for the salaries, names, and titles of all employeesmaking more than $100,000, the Federal Reserve Board did not.
Instead, the agency sent only charts listing the number of employees in various salary categories - for example, 17 board employees will make between $160,000 and $170,700 this year, and 10 will make between $150,000 and $160,000.
Federal Reserve Board spokesman Joseph R. Coyne said it has long been Fed policy not to give out any more information than that.
"That's been the procedure and the practice," Mr. Coyne said. "Nobody's ever challenged it."
He added, "You got more than I thought you would."
Rebecca Daugherty, a Freedom of Information Act expert with the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press in Alexandria, Va., said she found the Fed's stance puzzling.
"They're required to give that out," she said. "Salaries of federal employees are not secret."
Office of Personnel Management regulations, in fact, require federal agencies to provide salary data in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
No matter, said Mr. Coyne. "That's part of the independence of the Federal Reserve - that we're not subject to the Office of Personnel Management."
Mr. Coyne said the Fed's refusal to release salary data is "a privacy type thing."
The salaries of the Federal Reserve governors and the presidents of the 12 Federal Reserve banks are definitely public.
Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan makes $133,600, while the other five governors make $123,100 each. The salaries of the Federal Reserve Bank presidents range from $253,200 for Robert T. Parry of San Francisco to $178,500 for J. Alfred Broaddus Jr. of Richmond.
Not counting presidents, one unidentified Federal Reserve Bank employee has a base salary this year of between $200,000 and $210,000 - and has picked up a cash award of $9,706.
Three bank staffers make between $190,000 and $200,000, four between $180,000 and $190,000, and four between $170,000 and $180,000. Fourteen make between $160,000 and $170,000, and 17 between $150,000 and $160,000.
