Jack Lew (Bloomberg)
It seemed like a sweet deal at the time, but the fat compensation package that Jack Lew banked as a top executive at NYU — which appears to have exceeded $5 million over four years — has become an obstacle to his confirmation to be the next Treasury secretary.
Lew, President Obama’s former chief of staff, earned a salary of $840,000 when he joined the school as an executive vice president in 2002 — more than the nonprofit’s president — and his salary peaked at $907,000 the following year, according to NYU tax filings.
But some of the best perks were in the fine print.
As The Post first reported this week, Lew is under scrutiny for the $1.4 million loan he got from NYU. Lew told the Senate on Wednesday that he got a housing-assistance loan that was “forgiven” over a period of five years, plus another loan.
“That was probably calculated in order to minimize his income tax over that period,” a charity tax expert told The Post.
Lew and his wife used the loan to buy a home in the leafy Riverdale section of The Bronx. Lew has kept the home, which has increased in value from $1.3 million at the time of purchase to $1.8 million now.
Lew revealed the school provided an “annual payment” equal to the interest paid, which seems to indicate the school shouldered almost his entire monthly mortgage expense.
The administration has refused to say whether the school entirely forgave the loan when Lew left in 2006 to join Citigroup, although Lew has revealed that he got a “one-time severance payment.”
“They’re way off the charts,” Jeff Goodwin, a sociology professor at NYU, said of Lew’s cushy perks. “It’s in another world from where we live.”
Lew’s W-2 for 2006, which was turned over to the Senate Finance Committee, shows an income of $1.2 million, according to an aide — $445,000 more than the school reported on its tax forms — a possible indication that NYU paid off the loan.
All told, Lew could have banked $5 million between 2002 and 2006, when he left NYU to become an exec at Citigroup.
Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has been pressing Lew to reveal details of the loan and threatening to stall his nomination.
But a Democratic source said Grassley was grandstanding.