Jun. 1--Cross Country Healthcare's bonus plan told Chief Executive Joseph Boshart he was owed $192,600.

But Boshart's conscience told him he couldn't take a bonus while he reported huge losses and cut 70 employees, including many he had worked with closely for years.

"It didn't feel right," said Boshart, head of the 1,360-employee health-staffing firm based in Boca Raton.

So Boshart turned down the bonus. Partly as a result of that decision, Boshart's pay fell 30 percent from 2007 to 2008. Cross Country Chief Financial Officer Emil Hensel likewise skipped his bonus of $131,600, and his pay plunged 51 percent.

Boshart and Hensel were rare examples of executives who chose to leave money on the table, but they weren't alone in taking pay cuts last year. Reflecting a difficult economy and a cratering stock market, local executive paychecks fell significantly from 2007 to 2008.

The average pay for 92 executives at 21 publicly traded companies in Palm Beach and Martin counties dropped 14 percent, from $1.69 million in 2007 to $1.45 million in 2008.

That's according to The Palm Beach Post's analysis of proxy statements and annual reports filed by FPL Group, Office Depot and 19 other companies based in the region.

To calculate total pay, we counted salary, bonus, option gains, stock vestings and other types of compensation, including personal use of company planes and car allowances. However, we excluded the value of stock and options awarded during 2008, because the value of stock and options can change between the time they're granted and the time the stock is vested or the option is exercised.

While average pay fell significantly, median pay was off by only 0.3 percent.

The smaller executive paychecks here reflect a national trend. Median pay for CEOs dipped by 6.8 percent from 2007 to 2008, the first drop in CEO pay since 2002, according to a study of 208 large companies by Equilar, a Redwood Shores, Calif., firm that tracks executive compensation.

But critics of generous executive compensation say last year's dip in pay is only a small step in the right direction.

"I don't think it's definitive enough to say CEOs have learned their lessons, unfortunately," said Amaya Smith, a spokeswoman for the AFL-CIO. "There continue to be a lot of overly compensated CEOs on these lists. In the grand scheme of things, the CEOs haven't really suffered at all."

Pro-business types such as Alex J. Pollock, resident fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, say CEOs have suffered plenty as the stock market has dipped.