The president and CEO of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum offered a tone-deaf defense of the nonprofit’s extravagant executive salaries this week, as The Post’s Page 1 expose stirred outrage that officials are exploiting the city’s greatest disaster.
“Our executive compensation lags well behind that of peer institutions,” Elizabeth Hillman said in an email sent to the foundation’s trustees on Monday, adding that “recent compensation studies have supported adjustments across the organization.”
But in the email, obtained by The Post, Hillman did not name any other institutions or cite specific compensation studies. Neither she nor the September 11 National Memorial & Museum returned queries last week.
But at least one insider confided to The Post they were disgusted by the eye-popping salaries.
“It leaves a sour taste in my mouth,” the source said. “Why are you guys making so much money off dead people?”
Last week, The Post revealed salaries at the non-profit have ballooned, even as it continues to run in the red and ignore the wishes of some families of first responders murdered on 9/11.
Hillman pocketed $856,216 in total compensation in 2024, according to IRS filings, a 63% raise in just two years.
The next four highest-paid executives made $486,298, $458,652, $444,999 and $432,958 in 2024.
Meanwhile, the museum managed to lose nearly $20 million in 2024 — which it blamed on “depreciation” — while charging a $36 adult admission fee and scoring at least $4.5 million in taxpayer funds.
Aside from the money issue, some families’ long-running bitterness with museum leaders stems from the continued refusal to put the remains of 1,100 still-unidentified victims anywhere but in the museum’s lowest level, ignoring the pleas of families to move them above ground where loved ones and the public can pay tribute.
Hillman’s email contends “a diverse array of victims’ family members and other stakeholders advocated that the unidentified remains of those killed be returned to the World Trade Center site. Today, they lay in repose there, in a facility separate from the museum that is operated by the city’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.”
Glenn Corbett, professor of fire science at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and an advisor to 9/11 firefighter families, said the only way to access the remains is through the museum, which charges admission to the public.
“The families were never asked where the remains were to be placed, they just did it,” he said. “Our own survey of members told us 94 percent opposed placing them in the museum.”
Corbett called Hillman’s claim that the execs are underpaid compared to similar unnamed institutions “pretty outrageous.”
“Do these people have no conscience at all?” slammed Queens’ Rob Johann, a FDNY lieutenant on 9/11, in a letter to the editor.
“The 9/11 Memorial and Museum is a sacred place that honors all the innocent people we lost that day. This is a total outrage, and these fat cats should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.
“It is high time to have the purpose of a museum fulfilled without a certain few breaking the budget,” wrote Rosemary Cain, whose firefighter son was killed on 9/11.
“It should be known that families were never given a choice as to where they would put loved ones. We asked numerous times to poll the families and our requests were ignored,” she added.
“I find it sickening that humanity is kept in storage in the basement of the museum.”
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