{"id":1463,"date":"2010-01-02T11:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-01-02T15:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/01\/02\/local-governments-face-pension-scrutiny\/"},"modified":"2010-01-02T11:54:00","modified_gmt":"2010-01-02T15:54:00","slug":"local-governments-face-pension-scrutiny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2010\/01\/02\/local-governments-face-pension-scrutiny\/","title":{"rendered":"Local governments face pension scrutiny"},"content":{"rendered":"

We here at NCPR and the In Box have been poking at the “problem” of New York state’s vast and vastly expensive local government system.<\/p>\n

The Empire state has far more local government entities<\/a> than most comparably sized states around the country, most of them levying taxes, hiring employees and providing services.<\/p>\n

The obvious questions: are there two many of these entities? And are they spending our money wisely?<\/p>\n

New York’s Comptroller, Tom DiNapoli, has opened a new probe into the way local governments are handing out pensions.<\/p>\n

Pension abuse became an issue in the North Country last year, when DiNapoli’s office accused the Olympic Regional Development Authority of allowing an attorney to draw inappropriate retirement benefits.<\/p>\n

This from the Adirondack Daily Enterprise<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The state Olympic Regional Development Authority’s lawyer has been wrongly receiving retirement benefits, according to an audit released Monday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.<\/p>\n

The lawyer, John Cansdale, may also have shortchanged his hours in his full-time job as executive director of the state Racing and Wagering Board, for which he received retirement benefits on top of those ORDA gave him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The current inquiry focuses not on state agencies, but on thousands of local government entities that make use of the state’s retirement pension. This from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n

The move comes amid a state probe into fraud and abuse of the state’s $117 billion pension fundand wide discrepancies among local governments as to who receives full- or part-time pension credits.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/span>The pension fund, one of the largest in the country, provides benefits to state and local government workers outside New York City.<\/p>\n

If pension funds are being misused, taxpayers have to make up the difference because they contribute to public workers’ retirement benefits. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this kind of review, as state and local budgets tighten.<\/p>\n

And we may also see legislative action to fix the number of state workers who are drawing full pensions while still employed, often by a government agency.<\/p>\n

Does it really make sense to pay retirement to people who are still on the payroll?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We here at NCPR and the In Box have been poking at the “problem” of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}