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SCHENECTADY COUNTY
Early retirement incentive program targets 32 employees
BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporter

    Schenectady County is targeting 32 employees with an early retirement incentive, two of them upperlevel managers who have drawn the ire of the Democrat-controlled administration.
    On the list are Nicholas Barber, director of the Real Property Service Agency, and Brian Wright, executive director of Human Rights.
    Barber has served provisionally the last three years, the only director of real property tax services in the state not to be reappointed to a fixed term. He sought reappointment to a new six-year term of office in July 2007, but Democrats declined to make the move. His 2010 salary is $84,972; he also is one of the few appointed managers in county government to not receive a cost of living increase.
    Barber was appointed director in 1991. At the time, he was GOP majority leader in the county Legislature. He resigned his elected position to take the county job. He was able to immediately assume the job because there is no waiting period for elected officials to be hired by the county. He joined the Independence Party in 2003 to avoid politicizing the office, he said.
    Wright, the county’s only black department head, filed a complaint with the state Division of Human Rights in 2008, alleging the county denied him promotions and raises based on his race, sex and age. Wright also filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The status of his cases could not be immediately determined.
    Wright sought or was interested in two positions created in 2007 when the county consolidated the youth bureau and job training agency departments to save money in a tough budget year. He tried to apply for the new management position of commissioner of social services for youth development. The position offered a salary range of between $59,000 and $85,000. Wright, who has been human rights executive director since 1996, earns $68,209 annually.
    Wright also was interested in the newly created position of director of temporary assistance and employment, another management position with a salary range of between $59,000 and $85,000.
    Wright said in the complaint he was told by County Attorney Chris Gardner not to apply for the youth development position. Democrats, who control the county Legislature, never posted the job and instead awarded it to Ed Kosiur, a Democrat and former county legislator, giving him a salary of $80,000.
    County spokesman Joe McQueen denied the county was targeting specific people with the early retirement incentive. The criteria is for positions that can be fi lled through part-time replacements or replacements paid a lower salary, through reorganization, or are positions that are not needed, he said.
    A county cost analysis projects a savings of $7 million over fi ve years if all 32 employees opt for the incentive, which provides one month of service credit for each year of service, up to 36 months. Employees must apply for the incentive between Oct. 1 and Dec. 29.
    The county could have offered a non-targeted incentive, which would have opened the program to all eligible county employees. Mc-Queen said county offi cials feared too many employees would take the option, which would have ended up costing more than it saved.
    County Legislator James Buhrmaster, R-Glenville, said he sees the incentive as a way for Democrats, who control the Legislature, to put more supporters into patronage positions. “They want to get their own people in,” he said. “It is not a secret they will clearly look at people [for the incentive] who are not on the same page.”
    Buhrmaster said the county’s biggest expense is personnel, and “if they can get some people to leave, that is where the big savings is. This is going to be a very diffi cult [county] budget.”

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Hearing set on retirement program
    SCHENECTADY — The city of Schenectady will hold a public hearing next week on the new retirement incentive program for eligible city employees.
    The hearing is set for Wednesday, Aug. 25, at 5:30 p.m. in Room 209 at City Hall.
    Both Part A and Part B, voluntary incentive programs authorized by the state, will be discussed.
    Copies of a proposed law regarding the incentive programs will be available at the City Clerk’s offi ce during regular business hours.

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Stiil need for layoffs
Marv Cermak

Schenectady City Council President Gary McCarthy said adoption of an early-retirement incentive proposal under consideration could save about $540,000 a year.

He said 20 employees have signed up for the retirement plan, including Assessor Patrick Mastro and Keith Lamp, the city's building inspector. McCarthy said by law the city must have an assessor, but 11 of the positions to be vacated would be eliminated.

"We're looking ahead at a deficit of about $12 million," McCarthy said. "Even with the early-retirement savings, there will be a need for some layoffs to reduce the city's budgetary problems.'' He said it was too early to determine the extent of the layoffs.

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SCHENECTADY
Lamp, Mastro retiring from top jobs
BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter

    Schenectady soon will lose two of its most controversial employees, now that they’ve decided to take a state retirement incentive.
    Building Inspector Keith Lamp and Assessor Patrick Mastro will retire by Oct. 31, as will 17 other city employees. Replacing only the “chief positions” will allow the city to save $171,000 this year in salaries and benefits and $639,000 next year, Finance Commissioner Ismat Alam said. But it will cost the city $561,000 this year to buy into the state incentive — paid through borrowing.
    The City Council approved the retirement incentive at a special meeting Wednesday. It also approved a one-year moratorium on halfway houses, which temporarily blocks the proposed home for federal prisoners on State Street. The moratorium received broad public support at a public hearing held just before Wednesday’s vote.
    The retirement incentive drew some criticism.
    Pat Zollinger, who is running for City Council against Councilman Carl Erikson, said the retirements will also force the city to pay more in pension costs in future years.
    “It’s going to cost us more,” she predicted. “People who are entitled to retire should retire without an incentive.” ................................>>>>...................>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01304&AppName=1

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On August 25th, at a special meeting called by the City Council of Schenectady, though “legal notices” published in the Daily Gazette, three local laws were passed after two public hearings. We all heard about the local law putting a moratorium on halfway houses. That was discussed in the council committees meetings as well as by speakers at the privilege of the floor during both the July and August council voting sessions.

But the first time anything was written about the state’s “Retirement Incentive” for city employees was in a legal notice in the Daily Gazette published on August 19th.  And that is why I believe our city slides everything through as far under the radar as they can get away with. Those “back room” deals that they claim never happen obviously happen all the time.

I was the only person to speak at that public hearing even though the chamber was crowded with speakers for the moratorium. I doubt anyone else even knew that it was being held. Certainly not those who spoke for the moratorium, they appeared to be more concerned with the current social problems that affect social service agencies in the city, as opposed to how their property taxes would be affected presently and in the future for Schenectady Taxpayers.

Higher retirement contributions mean higher property taxes and that’s the plain truth.  

After this legislation was passed the New York State Comptroller came out with a report on the effect of the current retirement obligations that local municipalities will have to bear. That’s for current retirees, not including those who benefit from this incentive. We will be paying more even without the incentive that our city council handed out like candy.

Several local municipalities decided not to opt into this incentive, because it would burden their property tax payers even more. Yet the City of Schenectady has decided that the Schenectady Taxpayer can foot the bill. Apparently it doesn’t matter to them that our taxes are the highest in the entire capital region.

So what exactly is this retirement incentive and why is it costly for the taxpayers?  It allows State, County and Municipal employees to retire earlier and gives them additional retirement “credits” for the length of time they’ve been employees.  They retire earlier, the taxpayers foot the bill for their retirements longer because retirees are younger and live longer so we pay for a much longer period of time.  

And that’s not to bring up the fact that our city has continued to allow city employees to pump up their salaries through un-monitored overtime for the last three years before they retire. That’s called pension padding and our city administration allows it now, and has allowed it for decades.

There are also cost of living adjustments that retirees are eligible for five years down the road and that’s something that never decreases.  That’s their raises in retirement. Social security recipients also get cost of living adjustments but they pay for Medicare Part B, which always increases more than that adjustment. City employees’ medical benefits are paid for in full when they retire. And that comes out of property taxes.

I personally went down to City Hall on August 19th demanding the legislation for the retirement incentive and was met with blank stares. What I ended up getting from the legal department was the legislation in its “approved form.” There were no forms or statistics or information about who was going to retire and at what cost to the taxpayer.  As a matter of fact, the first time I knew anything about who was going to retire was by reading Marv Cermak’s article published in the Times Union on Tuesday, August 24th, the day before the public hearing:

“Schenectady City Council President Gary McCarthy said adoption of an early-retirement incentive proposal under consideration could save about $540,000 a year.
He said 20 employees have signed up for the retirement plan, including Assessor Patrick Mastro and Keith Lamp, the city's building inspector. McCarthy said by law the city must have an assessor, but 11 of the positions to be vacated would be eliminated.
"We're looking ahead at a deficit of about $12 million," McCarthy said. "Even with the early-retirement savings, there will be a need for some layoffs to reduce the city's budgetary problems.'' He said it was too early to determine the extent of the layoffs”

We all know that the state is in financial trouble, but the City of Schenectady is also; big trouble that includes a $12.8 Million Dollar deficit going into the 2011 budget. And with this retirement incentive, that deficit is going to grow because every retiree taking that incentive will also be cashing out unused sick time and unused vacation time. One day after that public hearing, another newspaper reported as follows:

Building Inspector Keith Lamp and Assessor Patrick Mastro will retire by Oct. 31, as will 17 other city employees. Replacing only the “chief positions” will allow the city to save $171,000 this year in salaries and benefits and $639,000 next year, Finance Commissioner Ismat Alam said. But it will cost the city $561,000 this year to buy into the state incentive — paid through borrowing.

In bits and pieces, information has been doled out about this situation and I reiterate the following: “McCarthy said by law the city must have an assessor”, and I will extend that by law the city must have a building inspector. So I submit that it will cost the taxpayers more than half a million dollars this year. But I was intrigued about why Patrick Mastro was taking this incentive, his being an appointee by the current Stratton administration.

Patrick Mastro has worked for the City since February 23, 2005 as a replacement to former assessor Tony Popolizio. Mastro was to serve the remainder of Popolizio’s unexpired six-year term which was to end in October 2007 but obviously was reappointed to a new six-year term. News reports from 2005 list his starting salary then at $70,000, an increase of more than $10,000 over Popolizio’s salary when he left.  His experience was reported as: “Mastro works for Alvey, Cote & DiMura, a Latham firm that trains and supervises residential appraisers. His past experience includes stints as an assessment consultant to the City of Albany, project manager for the town of Colonie’s annual reassessment and work as a fee appraiser.”

Current news reports with the announcement of the city’s grant of retirement incentives as well as Mastro’s inclusion in the 19 out of more than a hundred that were eligible, list his salary at $81,000. Given the reported news history of Mastro’s eligibility and experience to have taken over this job, it appears that he would fall under the “Part A” of the 2010 Retirement Incentive Program with one glaring exception. Eligibility rules for Part A include number 2 that states “Be in a position designated to be eligible by the employer.” So for some reason, Mayor Brian Stratton decided that the position of assessor was eligible for this retirement incentive. Yet by law we are required to have an assessor so where does this position become eligible?

The retirement incentive for “Counties, Cities, Towns & Villages” states specifically that “Employers that elect to participate in Part A must target positions as eligible for the incentive. If there are more employees interested in the incentive than positions targeted in that title, the law requires that eligibility shall be determined by seniority. Employers are not required to eliminate the targeted positions if they have developed a savings plan. The plan must demonstrate that replacement employees’ base salaries result in a minimum savings of 50 percent of the targeted employees’ combined two-year salaries during the following two years.”

So again, with Gary McCarthy stating that “by law the city must have an assessor,” where is the plan that demonstrates a replacement employees’ base salaries result in a minimum savings of 50 percent of targeted employee’s combined two-year salaries for 2011 and 2012? By law the city must have an assessor so Mayor Stratton then goes on to explain in a later news article that he’s hoping to consolidate the assessment office with the county. Has this plan already been developed as is stated in the rules? I don’t think so as Susan Savage stated in the same article, “We’ll see if there’s any ways we can consolidate positions.” That hardly seems as though any forethought was put into initiating this retirement incentive.

But then again, if Patrick Mastro was re-appointed to a new six-year term at the end of the October 2007 term, then I submit that he is NOT eligible to participate in this retirement incentive and the taxpayers have been yet again, victimized by our current administration with the generous salaries and benefits handed to their political friends and cronies. And as clear evidence to that I cite the City Council’s approval to create a new job in Commissioner of General Services Carl Olsen’s new city garage “body shop” who is a “card carrying” union member. That coupled with the fact that the city is charged by law to have an assessor and the county was apparently unaware that this administration wants to consolidate the assessor’s office clearly shows that this administration is not helping Schenectady Taxpayers, but rather helping themselves.

The newspaper article also states:
“Mastro, 57, plans to take a job with a private company that performs reassessments. He has spoken with several companies but hasn’t finalized his new job yet.
“I plan to keep working,” he said.
He said he was willing to take the incentive — which amounts to an extra 10 months of credit in the state retirement system — because he’d finished what he wanted to accomplish.”

Patrick Mastro has worked for the city since February 23, 2005 so he has met the minimum requirements of being over the age of 55 and having worked at least five years.  But since his reported experience also lists his being a “project manager” for the Town of Colonie that must account for have of those 10 months of credit; five years here, five years there.

Using the State Retirement System’s “benefits calculator” with several estimated figures I came up with the following:

Tier: 4
Plan: A15
Age at retirement: 57 years, 6 months, 30 days
Years service at retirement: 10.00
Incentive additional service credit: 0.83
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Your projected annual Single Life Allowance will be 14.5% of your final average salary (FAS). Using a “Final Average Salary” of $77,142, your annual service Single Life Allowance would be $11,185.

Now that’s not a lot of money so I questioned what the incentive was for him to retire. And then it hit me. The single most costly “benefit” that the city has given to all of its employees, elected officials and retirees alike is paid health insurance. That’s got to be the reason why Patrick Mastro has taken this incentive, and the only reason why Mayor Brian Stratton pushed that through with either the blessing of our city council, or its stupidity.

Schenectadians are losing their jobs and the Schenectady City Council is creating jobs for appointed department heads.

Schenectadians are losing their homes and the City Council thought it was a great thing to get a fitness coach for the police department.

Schenectadians are forced to stand in line, go from City Hall to some building a block away and be given a total of three minutes to state their grievance for the property tax assessment, and the City Council is allowing the tax assessor to retire on our dime in addition to having his health insurance paid for by Schenectady Taxpayers for the rest of his life.

As a Schenectady Taxpayer, I am outraged. And every Schenectady Taxpayer should be outraged too.