January 29, 2009

Police chiefs pad pensions with overtime

Money is so tight in Kingston, the city has stopped assigning police to work overtime to control traffic and crowds at the St. Patrick's Day Parade. In Utica, police overtime has jumped $84,000 in two years. In Yonkers, police officers earn as much as $253,000 with overtime.

Much of the overtime is earned by veteran cops nearing retirement who want to boost their future pensions. It turns out some police chiefs also pad their pensions with overtime.

The Buffalo News cites former Hamburg Police Chief Joseph Coggins, whose annual pension of $104,512 slightly exceeds his final base salary of $104,458 when he retired in 2007. As a Tier 1 employee, his pension is based on his final year's salary, not an average of his three highest years.

Coggins increased his final pay with $11,018 in overtime, $5,041 in comp time and $13,000 in longevity pay, bringing his 2007 wages for pension calculations to $140,000.

However, his total compensation from the Town of Hamburg that year was even larger.

Coggins got a golden parachute when he retired, allowing him to receive $293,860 in his final year on the job--including more than $100,000 in sick-time buybacks and thousands of dollars more in vacation time buybacks, town records show.

The buybacks weren't included in his pension calculation.

In the Town of Tonawanda, for example, all officers, including the chief, are guaranteed 17 extra days of work in their final year on the job, officials said. The extra-shifts policy meant almost $10,000 in added pay for each of the last two Tonawanda town police chiefs, records show.

"The chief--the chief executive officer--should never receive overtime," McMahon said. "That's one of those 'only in the public sector' things."

Posted by Lise Bang-Jensen

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