AG widens probe on “double dipping”
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- May
- 15
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just announced he is expanding his “double dipping” investigation on pension fraud by requesting information from each of New York’s 685 public-school districts on hiring retired officials who had already been receiving public pensions. (He had previously sought this information just from Long Island districts.)
Cuomo’s office is looking for “double dippers” engaged in fraudulent activity and has been investigating local governments and special districts in addition to school districts.
Cuomo the Legislature will hold a public hearing next Thursday on the pension-fund investigation.
“New Yorkers need to know that their tax dollars on not being wasted on state benefits for those who do not deserve them,” he said in a statement.
Cuomo has been probing a number of cases in which lawyers have been on the the payrolls of the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services for so long, or were on so many school districts’ or BOCES’ payrolls for so long, that they accumulated a lot of credits in the state Employees’ Retirement System. They were allowed to “double dip” because they were earning salaries and pensions at the same time.
Last week, the attorney general announced settlement agreements with a western New York law firm and an Albany-area attorney—the lawyers ended their “improper employment arrangements” and rescinded all public benefits they had received.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 3:20 pm by Cara Matthews.
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there is a much larger issue involving municipal employee
pensions..one that I doubt a democratic ag who wants to
be governor would be willing to tackle..that is the
practice of younger police and fire fighters giving their
overtime to older workers three years out from retirement…
the effect is to boost their last three years salary far
and above what it would have been had they simply gotten their paygrade with some overtime…the result is inflated
pensions that cost the taxpayers tens of millions of dollars
and create a windfall where none was intended..the practice
is the same as stealing..although legal it does indirectly
what cannot be done directly
This, and dozens of other “legal scams” have been well-known for at least 40 years, probably more, and no action, or even comment, has been made by any incumbent politician so far as I remember.
The problem is what do you do about it. Do you question everyone in a back room? Or do cap the amount of overtime for all firemen and cops? The only thing that can be done is to eliminate the ridiculous pension plan but that would probably lead to a strike.
they are entitled to their pensions…they are not entitles
to jimmy rig their last three years salaries…the public
needs to put pressure on their legislators to make it
clear that the practice is unacceptable…Frankly Andrew
Cuomo should be bringing an injunction lawsuit to prevent
that kind of abuse of the system..ie the lawsuit should
prevent the transfer of overtime from a younger person to
an older person and should cap the amount of salary that
can be made in the last three years to a percentage
of that made previously…..
Unless I am incorrect, there is nothing illegal about a co-worker telling another co-worker take my hours. The only thing going forward is the county can try and negotiate a more favorable pension system with incoming workers or cap the amount of overtime.
Given how well compensated part-time legislators are, I am not sure why this merits a probe anyway. Firefighters and police officers risk their lives and they get a little extra at the end, so be it. Most blue-collar workers can’t even afford to live in Westchester County anymore.
Cuomo said the arrangements were a type of “political patronage” in which local government officials hired attorneys, who also happened to be politically active locally, and made them eligible for pension benefits by classifying them as employees.
Many levels of government, regulations that were misused, politics—you put those factors together, and that’s the stew that we’re dealing with,” Cuomo said
http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202421441242