Prominent Hershey Trustee Paid $500,000 a Year for Board Service

A prominent Pennsylvania politician who helps lead the charity that owns the Hershey chocolate and entertainment business has collected $500,000 each of the past two years for serving on Hershey-related boards, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Board compensation for Leroy S. Zimmerman, a Republican former attorney general, has risen from $35,000 a year in 2002 when he became a trustee of the bank that manages the charity’s assets. The following year, then-Attorney General Mike Fisher lifted rules that would have limited Mr. Zimmerman to serving on a single Hershey board.

Connie McNamara, a Hershey Trust spokeswoman, said Mr. Zimmerman’s board roles involve “separate and distinct responsibilities” that include corporate as well as charitable activities, among them chairing Hershey Entertainment. “It is absolutely false to portray his entire compensation as in service of a charity,” she said.

Trustees’ compensation is paid by Hershey’s for-profit companies, which pay for the Hershey School for impoverished children. The state is investigating the Hershey Trust’s finances, particularly its 2006 purchase of a golf course for well over its assessed value.