Members of Save Audubon Park, the year-old organization devoted to criticizing practically everything done by the Audubon Commission and Audubon Nature Institute, recently discovered what looked like a godsend: news that Ron Forman, chief executive officer of the institute, received $672,000 in compensation in 2000, an 86 percent increase from his 1999 pay of $361,000.

The organization quickly posted the information on its Web site and sent out e-mails to people on its mailing list, comparing Forman's pay with that of lower-paid CEOs at other nonprofit organizations.

The figures on how much Forman and other top Audubon officials make are contained in documents the institute, like other nonprofits, files with the Internal Revenue Service.

But Forman said his 2000 figure is misleading because the total included a large one-time payment to cover 30 years of accumulated annual leave and sick leave he was entitled to but had not used.

His base salary in 2000, Forman said, was $260,000, plus $120,000 in benefits such as retirement and life insurance plans. The one-time payment accounted for the rest of the $672,000 reported to the IRS, he said.

In 2001, he said, he received $274,000 in base pay and $125,000 in benefits. The numbers this year will be somewhat higher, reflecting cost-of-living increases, he said.

Forman said the board of the Audubon Nature Institute, which sets his salary, decided it would rather pay the accumulated leave at one time than continue to carry the figure on its books as a liability. He said he agreed to the plan even though he had to pay a considerable amount in taxes.

The institute did the same thing in 2000 with Dale Stastny, then its executive vice president and chief operating officer, causing his reported compensation to balloon from $215,000 in 1999 to $371,000 in 2000.

The institute operates Audubon Park, Audubon Zoo, the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas and several other facilities for the Audubon Commission, a city agency.

Although the commission gets some money from the city -- primarily a 3.8-mill property tax that voters approved in 1986 to build the aquarium -- the bulk of the money for Forman's and all other Audubon employees' salaries comes from the institute's self-generated revenue, including memberships in the zoo and aquarium, admissions, gift shop sales, grants and other gifts, Audubon Tea Room rentals and revenue from the park's golf course.

In setting his salary and benefits, Forman said, the institute's board looks at the compensation of CEOs of other leading zoos and comparable institutions, such as the San Diego Zoo; Chicago's Brookfield Zoo, Lincoln Park Zoo, Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium; the Wildlife Conservation Society, formerly the New York Zoological Society, which runs the Bronx Zoo and other facilities in New York; the Cincinnati Zoo; Boston's New England Aquarium; and Zoo Atlanta.

The leaders of those institutions are paid between $250,000 and $385,000 per year, he said.

In 1999, Peter Betts, then president of East Jefferson General Hospital, was paid $466,000, the hospital's IRS filing showed. In 2000, Tulane University President Scott Cowen was paid $373,000.

In May 2001, the New Orleans City Council agreed to a proposal by the board of the New Orleans Museum of Art to raise Director John Bullard's salary to $121,000.

A survey by the Association of Art Museum Directors had found that Bullard's old salary of $71,500 made him the lowest-paid director of any of 172 surveyed museums. The salaries of the 172 directors averaged $160,000, with a salary of $496,000 topping the list. The 30 museums in the Southeast paid an average of $122,645.

At the time, James Sefcik, director of the Louisiana State Museum, earned $104,000.

Also in 2001, J. Ron Brinson, then president of the Port of New Orleans, earned $213,000, plus a benefits package worth about $96,000. Jimmie Fore, president of the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, was paid $198,953. New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau officials declined to reveal the exact salary of President Ed McNeill but said it was in the $200,000-to-$250,000 range.

Roy Williams was hired in 2001 as director of New Orleans International Airport at a salary of $160,377.

See also, Brazen Reader Manipulation