2024 snapshot:
In the past I’ve written about how easy it might be to bribe our leaders.
I’ve also noted that, even where there’s no proof of corruption, the current Executive Director of the National Court Reporters Association, Dave Wenhold, either personally or through his management company, runs lots of associations. So many that some might say it could impact the amount of time spent on our national association’s issues.
And so I’ll add today that it’s sort of comical that, at least in 2024, expenses went over revenue by almost exactly what Wenhold’s salary / pay is. 4.93M expenses. 4.6M revenue. And Wenhold’s payment? 0.3M.
And yeah, I get the whole song and dance that this is the guy who can run an association of this size. But, you know, so was Jim Cudahy at one point, and we all saw how that turned out with the Speech-to-Text Institute.
I stand by what I said in the corruption article. We should send our own people to association management training and have one of us steering the ship. The consolidation of too much power in one person is a dangerous thing. We had the good sense to write term limits into NCRA’s constitution and bylaws. Why, then, do we consolidate, year after year, one man’s power over the organization? Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying we need to flip the seat every year. But after half a decade of frozen/falling revenue and a fairly stagnant membership count, and a man that’s been involved with the court reporting profession for 17 years or more, isn’t it time to try a new approach?
Critical thinking demands the question at least pass through the minds of the Board of Directors.