The Investigators

DFW AIRPORT (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ― Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport wanted to keep a report titled "Compensation Assessment" private. Airport officials said the report contained sensitive information and it wasn't an attempt to hide anything. But a ruling from the Texas Attorney General's Office ordered the airport to release the report that contains analysis of the skills and abilities of high ranking and highly paid airport officials.

Back in 2007, DFW Airport started a top to bottom review of top executives. It included everyone from CEO Jeff Fegan, down to his executive vice presidents, vice-presidents, and assistant vice-presidents.

The airport spent $38,000 to hire the Hay Group, a highly respected management consulting firm, to conduct the report.

Records show the company interviewed at least 25 executives to evaluate their skills, problem-solving abilities, and accountability, and then scored them on a point system.

"They wanted to look at all positions, and reporting relationships. I think the study was one designed to understand what was going on with the organization," said Fegan.

As previously reported on CBS 11 News, Fegan, and most of his executive vice-presidents, are the highest paid airport bosses in the country, and in some cases they make much more than their counterparts at larger airports.

Once the Hay Report's 28-page draft was completed, the company suggested next steps on compensation. The suggestions included reviewing, modifying, and setting a compensation philosophy, building an executive structure and carrying the process through the entire organization.

But after receiving scores for its executives and The Hay Group's draft report, the airport decided not to proceed any further.

Before Jeff Fegan fired her last year, Di Ann Sanchez was the airport's vice-president of Human Resources. Sanchez has since filed a discrimination lawsuit against the DFW Airport Board. She says she brought in the Hay Group in 2007 because the airport needed to update its compensation structure. "I was very disappointed," she said.

When asked why she thought the airport didn't continue with the next step Sanchez responded, "I don't think they liked the answer to those results. I think there would have been a reorganization. There could have been less executive vice-presidents, vice-presidents, and definitely less assistant vice-presidents."

  Read the entire DFW Compensation Assessment by the Hay Group.

The draft report reveals the scores by two executive vice-presidents were on a lower evaluation level than three other executive vice-presidents. One assistant vice-president received a higher evaluation than 11 more senior ranking vice-presidents.

Mel Fugate, a management and leadership consultant, and professor at the SMU Cox School of Business, is familiar with the Hay Group's job evaluation methodology. Fugate says, "Based on the job evaluations that were done, they could indeed suggest different numbers of jobs, shifting some of the responsibilities, and thereby also shifting the numbers of people doing these jobs and/or the compensation with those jobs."

DFW Airport said going forward with the Hay Group would have been too expensive and would have taken too long to train employees.

The airport did promote three employees who received higher scores, but did not demote anyone who received lower evaluation scores. And even though the Hay Group's report is clearly titled "compensation assessment", CEO Jeff Fegan insists otherwise. "Hay was never intended to do a compensation study for DFW airport," he said.

After CBS 11 started asking questions about the 2007 report, the airport had the Hay Group write a letter, in which the company said, "The Hay Group methodology can be used to access market pay information; however in our engagement with DFW Airport we did not conduct a compensation market analysis", or in other words - a salary survey.

Despite the declarations, one of the report's recommendations was to conduct a salary survey to determine the competitiveness of executives' salaries. While DFW Airport cited cost as one reason not to go forward with that in 2007, in January of this year, DFW Airport signed a three-year contract for $1.2 million with the Hay Group to become its new compensation and benefits consultant.

After CBS 11 started asking questions about how airport executives are compensated, the mayors of Dallas and Fort Worth set up a board compensation committee for its own independent compensation study of airport executives. The new committee hasn't yet held its first meeting.

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