By Troy Torres
Yet another University of Guam administrator position received two pay raises in less than a year and during the public health emergency... while classrooms were closed. Remedios B. Cristobal, associate dean for enrollment management and student success and registrar, now is paid $99,792 a year, effective March 29, 2021. Less than a year before that, the position paid $92,216 before the first pay raise took Cristobal to a $98,884 salary per annum, according to pay raise documents.
Days before the raise took effect, on March 21, 2021, UOG's top two lieutenants sent a memo to their president, Thomas Krise, justifying the second pay raise.
"The second phase of the move to the Administrator Salary Scale was scheduled to go in place in September 2020, however, when we received the revised budget from the Guam Legislature, we were unable to consider the move to slot the remaining employees into their proper slotting on the scale," wrote academic vice president Dr. Anita Enriquez and finance VP Randy Wiegand.
A month later and after several administrators were given their second pay raises, UOG's top officials went before the Guam Legislature telling senators they scheduled to increase tuition to cover the "cost of personnel." The university canceled those plans following Kandit's expose on the administrator pay raises.
So far in this investigative series, we have revealed the pay raises received by UOG's spokesman, Jonas Macapinlac, and its newly-promoted (without position announcement or competition) associate director of extension services Peter Barcinas. Both men now make six digit salaries.
All three in this series so far are now paid a base salary that exceeds the governor, lieutenant governor, the majority of their staff and cabinet, most nurses, some doctors, and nearly every professional in public schools, and law enforcement.
According to the memo submitted to Krise, UOG approved the pay raises "even though the University did not have the funds to make the move at the time."
