Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just announced three more settlements with lawyers who had been wrongfully earning public pension benefits while they were acting as independent contractors, and he suggested that pension abuses should be listed, possibly, as felonies.
The settlements, which total $235,000 come from the Syracuse-based Ferrara, Fiorenza, Larrison, Barrett and Reitz P.C.,: the New York City firm of Aiello and Cannick and Long Island attorney Gilbert Henoch.
At the Syracuse firm, three lawyers, Marc Reitz, Norman Gross and Henry Sobota have agreed to forego pension credits with the Madison Oneida (counties) BOCES and the firm will pay $100,000.
Lawyers from the New York City firm, Cuomo said, were improperly listed as employees at the Mount Vernon school district and will forego their pension credits as well as paying $75,000.
Long Island lawyer Gilbert Henoch had already collected more than $50,000 in pension benefits through earlier work at the Hempstead and East Meadow districts. He’ll give up future payments and pay $60,000
Cuomo, made the announcement with Long Island lawmakers who are preparing legislation to prevent future pension abuses. He also remarked that he believes these actions should be made into a felony, which would make it easier to bring criminal charges. No such charges have been brought so far in pension probes either by Cuomo or Comptroller Tom DiNapoli.
Pictured here after his announcement, Cuomo, who is a superdelegate also said he’ll wait for Hillary Clinton before he weighs in. His press conference came about two hours after news that Clinton might this evening concede that she doesn’t have enough delegates to beat Barack Obama in a nomination fight. “I want to hear what Senator Clinton has to say,” explained Cuomo, who served as Housing and Urban Development secretary under Bill Clinton.
Again, when is Cuomo going to finish his investigation of OSC? Who knew of the 25 million dollars diverted to Hank Morris? Where did the paperwork go? Who shredded it? It disappeared under DiNapoli’s watch. Where is this money now? Who has access to it? What about the millions of $$ of double dipping by pensioners that was ignored, even forgiven during the previous OSC administration during 2005-2006? Where are those memos? Who signed them? Why did OSC permit the independent contractor abuse to go on for so many years? Why was enforcement of this selective (i.e. used against low level typists, painters, and others on voucher but not attorneys) What agencies are these former OSC hacks running now? Inquiring minds would like to know. . .
Why is it that the TU NEVER investigates this type of corruption??
Comment by anonymous123 — June 4th, 2008 @ 9:44 am