Instead of asking for money, maybe the USOC officers should take a pay cut

Keep a grip on your wallet, Olympics fans.

Hoping to tug at your patriotic heartstrings, the U.S. Olympic Committee is about to launch a big fundraiser: "America Supports Team USA."

Nothing wrong with that. It costs money to field strong Olympic teams, and the U.S. Olympic Committee, which raises almost all its money through fundraising, broadcast revenues and sponsorships, always seems to be in need of more. Especially now, when many athletes are struggling to make ends meet because of the recession and dried-up sponsorships.

But a look at the annual tax reports filed by the USOC as a nonprofit might make Americans think twice before opening their checkbooks.

Eight USOC officers made more than $300,000 in 2008. And those were the paupers. Chief operating officer Norman Bellingham took home $663,369; former CEO Jim Scherr, $619,507; former communications officer Darryl Seibel, $367,779; chief of international relations Robert Fasulo, $356,214.

On and on, with 19 topping the $200,000 mark. (See the full salarly list on the Olympics Insider blog, http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/ronjuddsolympicsinsider/.) And nearly all of them live in Colorado Springs, Colo., which is nowhere near the top of anyone's high-cost-of-living list.

Is anyone else taken aback by those numbers? The COO of the nonprofit U.S. Olympic Committee pushing $700K a year? Its spokesperson pulling down $368K?

Is this the USOC, or AIG?

Not only are USOC executive salaries failing to decline in recessionary times, they're going hellbent in the other direction. Bellingham, for instance, got a 63 percent raise from 2007 to 2008, federal reports indicate.

Even Scherr, ousted in a palace coup by his board of directors, apparently led by new interim CEO Stephanie Streeter, got a 10.5 percent bump last year. And Seibel, who left the Colorado Springs offices last week under what can charitably be described as odd circumstances, got a 7.8 percent increase.

Overall, USOC salaries rose from $35 million to $39 million in 2008.

This is not by accident. It's by design.

In a teleconference Friday, Streeter staunchly defended the high-and-rising USOC pay structure.

"I believe that they are justified," she said. "We have a significant amount of talent we're trying to attract from both the sports, corporate and other worlds. It's my opinion that you get what you pay for."

National surveys, she added, indicate USOC salaries are "not out of line" with other nonprofits.

But they probably seem out of line to lower-rung people in the Olympic movement, many of whom work for a relative pittance, and believe working for the USOC, or for a sport's national governing body, is a privilege.

Still, it's tough to argue that those big USOC salaries are draining funds from athletes. In fact, the USOC's four-year financing for the national governing bodies of winter sports headed into Vancouver 2010 is 55 percent more than the same sports received in the leading into the 2006 Turin Games.

"The athletes," Streeter said, "are my top priority."

No evidence suggests otherwise. But the USOC pay figures still seem high — particularly at a time when corporate America is cutting back, and major USOC sponsors such as Home Depot and Bank of America are bailing out.

Add the sheer-gall factor. Does the USOC really expect citizens to make "charitable" contributions to an organization whose leaders are taking home 600K a year?

Streeter sees no such contradiction. Bottom line: "We're comfortable with what we're paying people," she said.

Maybe that's because she's sharing the wealth — although we don't know how fully. Streeter, the head of an organization that's made a much-vaunted push for "transparency" in recent years, refused to divulge her own salary when queried about it Friday, telling a reporter to wait until the USOC is forced to divulge it in IRS-required paperwork.

"You'll see it in the [Form] 990s when it's published next year," she said.

Touché.

But in the news business, that's called creating an issue. And for Streeter, creating this one — while holding out a hand and asking for disposable cash from a nation with 10 percent unemployment — is poor timing, at best.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be the sixth covered by columnist Ron Judd, author of a new keepsake guide, "The Winter Olympics: An Insider's Guide to the Legends, the Lore, and the Games." Contact him at 206-464-8280 or rjudd@seattletimes.com