Watchdog group finds it interesting that a gubernatorial candidate is taking this action against public employees.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who is running for governor, discusses his investigation into pension padding by state workers during a stop at Onondaga Community College on Thursday, July 8, 2010. Syracuse, NY - Attorney General Andrew Cuomo stopped on the Onondaga Community College campus Thursday to announce that there is enough evidence of pension padding by public employees in New York state that he has expanded his investigation.
Cuomo did not name any specific public employees, but said preliminary research shows that workers across the state are significantly, and possibly fraudulently, inflating their salaries with overtime in order to boost their pension payments after retirement.
Earlier this year, Cuomo collected payroll data from 64 state agencies, local agencies, municipalities and public authorities that participate in the Common Retirement Fund. His staff analyzed data from 50 of those entities and found that more than half showed patterns of pension padding.
He gave some examples without naming names. A highway maintenance employee went from no overtime in earlier years to working 539 hours of overtime in the final years before retirement. A firefighter went from no overtime in early years to working more than 2,000 hours of overtime in his final years.
Most cases show people taking advantage of loopholes in existing laws. He said he could prosecute cases in which an employee worked overtime only to intentionally boost his or her pension benefits. No one has been prosecuted.
Cuomo sent letters on Thursday to 27 more municipalities on Thursday, requesting payroll data.
In Central New York, letters went to the town of Manlius, the city of Oneida and the city of Fulton. Earlier this year, the office asked for payroll data from the city of Syracuse.
Cuomo’s staff said it was a just a coincidence that Cuomo appeared on the OCC campus to talk about pension padding six months after a Post-Standard report about a sheriff’s deputy who boosted his overtime by working at the Central New York Police Academy at OCC.
A newspaper report in December showed Sgt. Michael Asmolik worked 1,328 hours of overtime and 568 hours of part-time pay at the police academy, more than doubling his base pay, as he approaches retirement.
The Empire Center, a fiscal watchdog group, said Thursday that discovering that government employees work extra overtime to spike their salaries is “akin to learning there’s gambling in Casablanca.”
What’s interesting, they note, is that the investigation is coming from Cuomo, who could be the next governor in control of thousands of public employees. The group questioned whether a Cuomo administration would try to change the law to eliminate overtime in pension calculations or negotiate to change union contract rules that award overtime on the basis of seniority.
When asked about changes to laws and union contracts, Cuomo said he wants to come up with a comprehensive reform agenda that solves the frauds, then address the cost of the system as a separate issue.
Cuomo was asked why he does not start looking into the specific document cases of pension padding exposed by newspapers across the state. He said he wanted to learn about the system and the patterns of manipulation first.
“I often use the newspaper work and it’s a good starting point, but we do an investigation also,” he said. He said there are a lot of varieties of abuse to investigate. Cuomo said he has been working on the project for three years.
Cuomo’s staff said his campaign committee paid for Cuomo’s travel to Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse on Thursday, because Cuomo attended a fundraiser at the end of the day. Cuomo attended a $250-per-person fundraiser in his honor at the Fayetteville home of Dean and Dodie Vlassis.
Michelle Breidenbach can be reached at mbreidenbach@syracuse.com or (315) 470-3186.