Watchdog Seeks Probe of Minn. Fund’s Booming Trustee Pay

A national nonprofit watchdog group is calling on Minnesota authorities to investigate a St. Paul-based foundation at which annual compensation for three trustees has increased nearly tenfold in the past decade to about $1.2-million, writes the Star-Tribune.

In a letter Thursday to state Attorney General Lori Swanson, the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy termed the pay hikes at the St. Paul-based Otto Bremer Foundation “suspicious and potentially illegal” and questioned whether the trustees’ ballooning compensation figured in their recent decision to oust the charity’s executive director and take over management duties themselves.

The foundation paid its three trustees $41,500 each in 2004. In 2012, trustees Brian Lipschultz, Daniel Reardon, and Charlotte Johnson received $456,468, $453,151, and $284,417, respectively. The charitable trust was established in 1944 by the late banker Otto Bremer and owns 92 percent of his business holdings.

Ms. Swanson’s office did not return a call for comment. Her predecessor, Mike Hatch, said the attorney general’s office has limited powers to regulate private foundations and their trustees. A successful legal challenge to trustee pay would have to demonstrate “inurement”—effectively theft, he said.