WSLS takes a closer look at Gwen Mason's new $86,000 job

ROANOKE - Earlier this month, former Roanoke City Councilwoman Gwen Mason started a new job with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

On July 6, Mason started working as the Community Outreach Coordinator for an unnamed program designed to help prevent crime.

On Tuesday of this week, Gwen described what she plans to do in her new role.

"What you want to do is get the pre-bad guys before people make the wrong choice," she said. "That is what we're trying to do with this effort."

Her new job comes with a new salary - $86,000 of taxpayer's money each year, for the next three years.

You may have seen Jay Warren's blog earlier this week, which questioned the need for such a high starting salary when that money could support so many other resources in Southwest Virginia. http://www.mywsls.com/index.php/jaystake/comments/is_gwen_masons_new_salary_as_a_crime_preventer_worth_it/

We did some research and compared Mason's salary to the starting salaries of others working to fight crime, like police officers who risk their lives every day.

The starting salary for a Virginia State Trooper is $36,207.

A Roanoke City police officer starts at $32,314.

Roanoke County pays their officers $33,822.

In Blacksburg, officers start at $33,822 while the Virginia Tech Police Department offers $32,000.

Pulaski officers can expect to start at $30,838.

The Vinton Police Department offers a starting salary of $32,958.29.

And in Danville, even with a college degree, officers will only see $35,726.

All of these salaries are less than even half of Mason's.

According to Virginia.gov, an assistant commonwealth's attorney salary starts at $45,000, and that position requires a law degree. That's a little more than half of Mason's salary.

We called Mason's new boss, U.S. Attorney for the western district, Tim Heaphy.

He told us the new position - and the new program - are different than any other before it.

Heaphy said, "It's a brand new position. It has not existed in our office or any other office before. It's a pilot project that we're trying out here sort of as an experiment. For federal prosecutors to get involved in crime prevention is unusual."

We asked Heaphy what he had to say to taxpayers who feel Mason's new salary is simply too much. He said, "I don't really have any response to that."

The U.S. Department of Justice is paying for the program, and Heaphy says he didn't have a say in deciding Mason's salary.

"We had no control over the salary," he said. "The way this works in the federal system is that we come up with a position description, we identify her obligations, and then the folks in Washington who adjust the federal pay scale assign it a GS number. This has been assigned as a GS 12, and then based on Gwen's experience in the government she was placed in the GS 12 scale at that figure."

He added, "I think by fixing this job as a GS 12, it's a demonstration of the importance that we place on crime prevention."

The DOJ will evaluate the program's success after three years and re-evaluate its funding. By that time, Mason will have earned $258,000, a number that Heaphy says is well-deserved.

"I personally think that's money well spent," he said. "I think this is a very ambitious endeavor. I think Gwen has unique skills and is very well qualified to take this forward, and I think we're going to get our monies worth from her."

There were more than 100 applications for the job from across the country, but Heaphy says he had good reason for choosing Mason.

"She has a lot of experience in government, she's worked in the federal system before," he said. "She spent - I think - 13 years in the Interior Department, so she knows the federal government and how to navigate the bureaucracy of the federal government. She also has really good local government experience."

Heaphy is optimistic about the program's success.

"My hope is that it becomes not only permanent here, but it becomes replicated around the country," he said.

Heaphy also considers Mason and her experience a great asset to the success of the new program.

He said, "I can see Gwen going into a church basement or a substance abuse facility, a community meeting, school board meeting, a number of different forums, and being really effective. I think she's got great communication skills."

And Heaphy said Mason's job will require her to do just that - communicate.

"The first goal is to travel all over the district listening. There's a lot of initial ear-to-the-ground time spent talking to people who live and work in the diverse communities in our district, just hearing them identify their problems," he said. "I want Gwen to travel our district - our very diverse and big district - identifying community problems, issues that communities are facing, and people that are doing positive things in those communities."

Heaphy said it will take some time to find ways to measure the program's success and decide if it should become permanent.

We called Mason to get her take on her new salary, and if she feels its justified, but she declined to comment.

Click here to read the news release on the anti-crime prevention program and Gwen Mason's role:
http://www.justice.gov/usao/vaw/press_releases/communityoutreachremarks.pdf