Reclaiming Artez's top salary was expensive
Reclaiming 44 euros in top salary from a former interim manager at Artez University of Applied Sciences cost the Education Inspectorate three times that in terms of staff deployment alone. In addition, the inspectorate hired 85 grand in legal assistance.
Source: Pixabay
This is evident from a specification of the costs that the Education Journal requested from the Education Inspectorate. It concerns an estimate made by the inspectorate after last month by GroenLinks Parliamentary questions had been filed on the matter. It was the reason for those questions Education sheet message that the long-drawn-out top salary case has finally been closed after almost four years with a recovery of 44 thousand euros. The case was a legal test case for the Top Income Standards Act (Wnt) that was just introduced at the time.
Substantial
In answer Minister of Education Ingrid van Engelshoven (D66) confirmed this month in parliamentary questions that the Artez case had cost the government a multiple of the reclaimed salary, namely 350 thousand euros. A 'substantial part' of this could be attributed to information requests based on the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob) and hired legal assistance.
According to the underlying breakdown, which Van Engelshoven did not send to the House, the largest cost item turned out to be man hours at the inspection itself: 140 thousand euros. External legal assistance cost 85 grand. The ministries of OCW and the Interior have together given up 30 grand in time commitment.
It would have cost 90 grand to deal with Wob requests. The Education Magazine also submitted two Wob requests, because the case took place almost entirely behind closed doors.
Source: Education Inspectorate
Forced
The Artez case was a legal struggle, the Reconstruction of the Education Magazine a year ago. It was the first time that a former executive had been forced to pay back salary to an educational institution.
It is not known how much Artez has incurred in costs. In the first instance, the university college had to recover an excess of salary itself. When that failed, the ball returned to the inspection.
