Whether they are sick, vacationing or working their usual shifts, top police brass in the city are receiving thousands of extra dollars a year in perks.

They call it “show-up pay,” meaning the police chief and two deputy police chiefs are paid extra for reporting to work 15 minutes early. In practice, the show-up pay is paid whether the police leaders show up or not.

It amounts to about extra $30 per day, enough to buy a golf shirt.

Over the course of a year, the extra pay totals more than $7,700 for deputy police Chiefs Mark Williams and Michael Bailey, and more than $8,500 for police Chief Daniel LaBella. That would more than cover a week in Hawaii.

A good-government expert in Albany calls the annual cost of the benefit “outrageous.”

“It seems curious to be paying the police chief and deputy chiefs thousands of dollars extra per year to show up early every day,” said Lise Bang-Jensen, senior policy analyst for the Empire Center for Public Policy. “Shouldn’t that be part of his job?

“This deal is costing Utica taxpayers $22,000 per year at a time when the economy is in terrible shape,” Bang-Jensen said.

Across the state and nation, public employee union contracts are filled with perks that add to a worker’s base salary.

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