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As he investigates pension padding, AG Andrew Cuomo requests payroll data from 3 more CNY governments

Published: Thursday, July 08, 2010, 6:20 PM     Updated: Friday, July 09, 2010, 7:40 AM

Michelle Breidenbach / The Post-Standard

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.

[SNIP]

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.

More at the link above.

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Fraud like that simply takes more tax money from the taxpayers to pay their pension.

There is a fundamental problem in calculation of pension if it considers overtime in the final years.  It is simply an invitation to defraud. If Overtime is to be considered, it should be the average overtime of their life's work or perhaps the last 15 years.

Meanwhile, I think AG Andrew Cuomo is very likely to win the Gov election in NY.

-- Edited by Sanders on Saturday 10th of July 2010 12:28:54 PM