מאיר ווערטהיימער/המספיק אין רעקארד

Kiryas Joel - The man who runs nonprofit organizations for the disabled in Kiryas Joel and the Monsey area of Rockland County made $452,000 in total compensation in 2004 - almost triple the pay of one industry peer with a much larger operation to run.

Meyer Wertheimer, executive director of Provider-Hamaspik of Orange County Inc. and Provider-Hamaspik of Rockland County Inc., collected $283,000 that year in separate salaries for the two organizations, which operate independently.

The other $169,000 spent that year on Wertheimer is less clearly defined. Federal tax forms classify it as "contributions to employee benefit plans & deferred compensation"; Wertheimer and someone claiming to speak for his board of directors in Kiryas Joel called it money set aside for retirement.

Wertheimer's total pay dwarfed the $158,000 earned that year by the executive director of Orange County AHRC, a similar nonprofit whose $26 million budget is double that of Hamaspik's Kiryas Joel and Monsey operations combined.

Wertheimer's nearest competitor among nonprofits for the developmentally disabled in this region appears to be James DeStefano, who earned $235,490 in 2004 to run Occupations Inc., a Middletown-based nonprofit that also takes in twice as much revenue as the two Hamaspiks.

Hamaspik runs group homes and provides other services for disabled children and adults in three Orthodox Jewish communities. It has no connection to the Kiryas Joel public school for students with mental and physical disabilities.

Hamaspik has separate nonprofits in Kiryas Joel, Monsey and Brooklyn. The Kiryas Joel chapter formed in 1988 and has its own board of directors. The Monsey and Brooklyn chapters, created in 1997, have virtually identical boards, with the exception that Wertheimer is listed as president of the Brooklyn board. The Brooklyn chapter has a different executive director.

While unusually high, there is no indication Wertheimer's pay violates any government rules.

Almost all of the combined $13 million that the Rockland and Orange County Hamaspiks collected in 2004 came from Medicaid and Medicare.

But those taxpayer-funded programs don't limit the compensation of executives whose organizations they support.

Zev Wurtzberger, listed on tax forms as the president of Hamaspik's board of directors in Kiryas Joel, didn't return calls for comment.

But in an e-mail sent to the Times Herald-Record last week, purportedly on behalf of his board, Wurtzberger described Wertheimer's "deferred compensation" as being for his retirement. Lumping it together with his salary would be "totally misleading," the writer argued.

Wertheimer declined interview requests, but answered some questions via e-mail. In one message, he explained his two salaries by saying he works full-time hours - meaning 40 hours a week - at each of the two Hamaspik operations.

"I work for each agency as hard as or harder than any counterpart," he said.

In another note, he justified his deferred compensation as a pension that makes up for "many previous years not being compensated."