Leroy S. Zimmerman was named in late 2002 to the board of the small state-chartered Pennsylvania bank that managed the assets of the Hershey charity for disadvantaged youth, the post paid about $35,000 a year and came with restrictions.For the tax year that ended July 31, 2010, Zimmerman, 76, earned $500,000 for the second consecutive year. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
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Governance reforms to take effect the next year would limit Zimmerman, a former attorney general and powerful Republican, to only that one fee-paying board in the Hershey charitable realm. But this would change. In June 2003, Mike Fisher, then the attorney general, ended the one-board limit.
Within four years, Zimmerman had added two additional fee-paying Hershey boards to his portfolio of responsibilities and his compensation soared into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
For the tax year that ended July 31, 2010, Zimmerman, 76, earned $500,000 – for the second consecutive year. His total compensation on Hershey-related boards in less than a decade is $1.9 million.
Zimmerman’s latest compensation was disclosed last month in an IRS 990 document and comes as the Office of Attorney General continues to investigate the charity for its 2006 purchase of a golf course, the details of which were reported by The Inquirer last October.
The IRS records, along with court documents filed in Dauphin County in early 2011, show how Zimmerman’s Hershey-related directors fees, modest in 2003 and 2004, grew to lucrative by 2008.
Zimmerman’s overall influence in Hershey matters expanded with his board directorships and his compensation. He is chairman of the board of the Hershey Trust Co. and the only person seated on all four Hershey boards, one of which, the one overseeing the Hershey School, is unpaid.
Zimmerman’s tenure is marked by a $70 million renovation and expansion of the Hershey Hotel and land acquisitions besides the golf course. Some of the decisions have drawn criticism that money was being spent that could have been used to expand the enrollment of the Hershey School.
As the most politically influential person on the Hershey Trust Co. board, Zimmerman was in a position to have himself nominated to the other paying boards.
Zimmerman’s compensation was paid by for-profit companies controlled or owned by the Hershey charity – the Hershey Trust Co., the Hershey Entertainment & Resort Co., and the Hershey Co. chocolate giant. The companies fund the highly acclaimed free Hershey School for impoverished children, though only the chocolate company provides substantial profits to help operate the school.
