The Los Angeles Dodgers paid one of their highest-ranking executives more than $400,000 for services rendered to the team's charity in 2007 — or roughly a quarter of the charity's nearly $1.6 million budget that year, the New York Times reports.

According to the tax filings of the Dodgers Dream Foundation, Howard Sunkin devoted forty hours a week to the organization in addition to serving as the team's senior vice president for public affairs, advising team owner Frank McCourt, and negotiating deals with local politicians and businesses. According to the Dodgers, Sunkin received additional compensation for his work outside the foundation, although the team did not provide a figure.

In a statement, Dodgers' vice president for communications Josh Rawitch said the 2007 pay reflected three years of efforts to expand the foundation's mission and community reach and included a bonus for achieving objectives set by McCourt. Since Sunkin began working with the foundation, which was established in 1998, it has broadened its scope to youth sports and recreation, education, health, and the environment, Rawitch added.

Critics of Sunkin's charity-related compensation argue that it is more in line with the salary of someone running a $100 million charity. According to tax attorney Marcus S. Owens, who from 1990 to 2000 directed the exempt organizations division of the Internal Revenue Service, if the agency determined that the charity paid Sunkin for time he did not actually work, he could be forced to reimburse the foundation and pay taxes on the excess compensation. "There's nothing in the filing that makes you think he was actually working forty hours a week for the foundation," Owens told the Times. "Their return raises a lot of red flags."