For the first time since the Great Recession, total compensation decreased for executives at Inland Northwest-based publicly traded companies, the Journal of Business annual analysis shows. 

Average annual total compensation for 41 executives from eight Inland Northwest-based public companies was $1.5 million, down 2 percent from an average of $1.53 million among the same executives in 2014. 

The analysis is conducted using information those companies must disclose to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission in annual proxy statements. 

In 2014, average total compensation for named executive officers increased 9 percent following a negligible increase of 0.2 percent in 2013. Average pay had been up every year since 2009. 

In some cases, companies for which executive pay declined reported that the compensation fell due to failure to meet goals. 

For example, Itron Inc., the Liberty Lake-based maker of automated meter reading technology, stated in its proxy that it took action on its executives’ pay because “we underachieved against our internal business plan and missed our performance target.”

Pay decreased for two of Itron’s named executive officers and increased for three others, while a sixth executive was new to the company last year. 

Avista Corp., of Spokane, said the company’s 2015 consolidated earnings per share came in between its threshold and its target, but other operational goals were met or exceeded. Its five named executives had decreases in total compensation ranging from 17.6 percent to 33.2 percent. 

Executives at Red Lion Hotels bucked the downward trend. Its five named executive officers had triple-digit increases in compensation, with percentage increases ranging from 169 percent to 339 percent. Much of those compensation gains involved hefty increases in stock awards and options. 

Among individuals on the list, Phillips S. Baker, president and CEO of Coeur d’Alene-based Hecla Mining Co., finished at the top with total compensation of about $4.7 million.

Baker supplanted Avista Corp. Chairman, President, and CEO Scott L. Morris at the Inland Northwest’s highest paid public-company executive. Morris came in third in 2015, with about $3.6 million in total compensation. 

Second to Baker was Thomas L. Deitrich, new executive vice president and chief operating officer at Itron. Deitrich had just under $4.6 million in total compensation in 2015. The company noted, however, that Deitrich’s compensation included special, one-time equity-award grants.

For the Journal’s analysis, total compensation is placed in five categories: salary, bonus and incentive pay, stock and option awards, pension plan changes, and other compensation. 

Because it includes stock awards and accounting of some benefits, total-compensation figures typically are substantially higher than the amount of money they took home for the year. For example, amounts listed for grants of restricted stock and stock options use formulas to determine what the stock could be worth in the future for an executive, and that executive might not be able to reap the financial rewards of owning that stock for years.

The Journal doesn’t include in the analysis gains that executives earn in a single year from having past restricted stock vest or for exercising past stock options. By adhering to more stringent SEC disclosure rules put in place during the mid-2000s, companies now include the current-year cost of such gains in their filing, so adding them could be duplicative. 

When breaking out salary and bonus alone, the analysis shows a more precipitous drop in pay. The average annual salary and bonus came in at $672,000, 14 percent lower than the $769,000 salary-bonus average for the same group of executives in 2014.  

While the drop in compensation ends five years of growth in executive pay, one trend that persists is the decline in the number of publicly traded companies based in the Inland Northwest—and thereby, the number of executives included in the analysis. 

Three companies fell off of the 2015 list: Ambassadors Group Inc., Mines Management Inc., and Northwest Bancorporation Inc.

Ambassadors Group, which provided education-based student-travel programs, discontinued its operations last year. 

Mines Management has been acquired by Hecla. 

Northwest Bancorp, which is the parent company of Inland Northwest Bank, now trades its stock on an over-the-counter bulletin board. Jason Miller, senior vice president and director of marketing at INB, says the company isn’t registered with the SEC anymore and thereby isn’t required to disclose executive pay. 

That drop in the number of public companies follows a two-year period in which four companies fell off of the list. Two were acquired—Hecla bought Revett Minerals Inc., and Portland-based Umpqua Bank acquired Sterling Financial Corp. One company, Coeur Mining Inc., moved its headquarters to Chicago from Coeur d’Alene, and another, Sandpoint-based retailer Coldwater Creek Inc., shut down after filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. 

While average pay decreased, 27 of the 41 named executive officers still had total compensation exceeding $1 million. That’s up from 23 executives bringing in more than $1 million in 2014 and 15 doing so in 2013. 

But as the number of $1 million-plus executives rose, the number of female executives decreased. Five of the 41 executives at Inland Northwest-based public companies are women, with three appearing in the top 30. Last year, nine women filled posts at public companies here, with five of them finishing in the top 30. 

Linda K. Massman, president and CEO of Clearwater Paper Corp., was the top-paid women on the list, finishing fourth overall with about $3.5 million in total compensation. She came in first and second on the list in 2013 and 2014, respectively.

Rounding out the top 10 is Itron President and CEO Phillip Mezey, fifth at about $3 million; former Itron senior vice president and general counsel John Holleran, sixth at about $2.5 million; Potlatch Corp. Chairman, President, and CEO Michael J. Covey, seventh at $2.4 million; Red Lion Hotels President and CEO Gregory T. Mount, eighth at about $2.4 million; Hecla senior vice president and CFO James A. Sabala, ninth at just under $2 million; and Hecla senior vice president of operations Lawrence P. Radford, 10th at about $1.9 million.

While Mezey came in fifth in total compensation, his $831,000 salary was the highest salary among all of the Inland Northwest named executive officers.