Politics on the Hudson

A week after it was revealed that Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli quietly restored pensions to the private attorneys he spent a year investigating, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced today that one of the top targets of their investigations has settled and will no longer receive state pension benefits.

Cuomo said Long Island attorney Lawrence Reich, who had been getting a pension of $61,596 a year, will have it stripped. Reich will have to pay back “more than $240,000 for his nearly 30 years of abusing the state’s public pension system.”

In September, DiNapoli had to restore about $500,000 in pensions to dozens of attorneys he stripped of their pension because two court rulings found that he didn’t give the lawyers due process.

One of those was Reich, who DiNapoli had to pay $92,394 in back pension benefits and proceed with providing him $5,133 a month until DiNapoli could hold a hearing to determine whether Reich and others should continue to get the pensions.

But Cuomo ended all that with Reich as part of the settlement.

Reich will pay the state $240,565.74 to end Cuomo’s investigation, forfeit his pension credits and withdraw his demand for a hearing with DiNapoli.

Reich was one of the original targets of the state investigation into private attorneys working as independent contractors for local school districts. In Reich’s case, he received nearly 30 years of “improper employment arrangements with six Long Island school districts,” Cuomo said.

“This lawyer epitomized the systemic waste and abuse in a state public pension system that routinely paid out millions in public funds to private-sector professionals who weren’t entitled to them,” Cuomo said in a statement.

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