Albany

Shawn Morse is a busy man. He’s a Cohoes city firefighter and also chairman of the Albany County Legislature, where he’s tasked with focusing the priorities of 38 fellow lawmakers who, like Morse, claim their legislative work is a full-time job.

Their elected positions have some benefits, though. The Albany County Legislature, like several thousand local government bodies statewide, passes a resolution every year or so declaring that a standard workweek for a select group of elected and appointed officials, including themselves, is just 30 hours. The declaration is required under state regulations for the public officials to earn full-time pension credits in the state retirement system.

To document their full-time work — under what is largely an honor system — the public officials are required once every eight years to submit a three-month sample of their public schedules, known as a record of activities.

A Times Union examination of the records filed by elected officials in four local counties — Albany, Rensselaer, Saratoga and Schenectady — shows that many county legislators have filed questionable, vague and, in some cases, illegible time sheets. Most of the officials whose time sheets were examined also have other full-time jobs in addition to their legislative employment, including jobs as attorneys, state government employees, educators and bankers.

“What happens is they all strive mightily to create time sheets to make it appear they work 30 hours a week,” said E.J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and its Empire Center for Public Policy. “Why should you get benefits and a pension for serving an elected office? Why should we promote the notion that a county legislator needs to work 30 hours a week; have we reached a point where our life is so suffused with county government? … Most people probably don’t even know who their county legislator is.”

The time sheets show that many lawmakers have listed their government work to include attendance at cocktail parties, parades, political fundraisers and caucuses. Some also have listed events in their public schedules purporting to be working on government business when traveling to and from their regular jobs, attending dinners or community breakfasts, and, in one instance, getting a haircut.

In Morse’s case, he filed time sheets last year indicating he was working on county business, while time-and-attendance records in Cohoes showed he was also on duty as a firefighter. Initially, Morse said he takes “comp” time, personal hours or vacation days from his fire duties to do his government work. But when confronted with the conflicting time sheets, Morse readily acknowledged that he often does county work while sitting in a fire station.

“When I’m in the firehouse, I certainly, at nighttime and certain times of the day, I answer my phone and I do all kinds of constituent work,” Morse said. “Unless I’m actually engaged in a call or fire … am I working as a county legislator? Absolutely. Some people read a book, some people watch TV and some people, like me, answer calls or answer emails.”

The system that affords public pensions to the elected officials has been around more than 40 years with very little overhaul. Four years ago, after numerous attorneys for school districts were exposed for reaping retirement credits for what amounted to contract work, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli implemented new regulations requiring elected and appointed officials to submit three-month samples of their government activities. Before that, an elected or appointed official had to submit only a one-month sample that was good for their lifetime. 

“By requiring elected and appointed officials to attest to how many hours they worked during their sample period, and by making the record of those activities available to the public, the system provides for another level of scrutiny,” said Eric Sumberg, a DiNapoli spokesman. “Work remains to be done to ensure officials are reported correctly and that employers comply with the regulations’ requirements, but the system put in place by Comptroller DiNapoli has greatly enhanced scrutiny and compliance in this area.”

Still, the comptroller’s office acknowledged that because of limited resources they only sporadically spot-check compliance. Roughly 3,000 agencies statewide take part in the state and local retirement system.

A review of the time records in four counties shows there is no uniform reporting system and many of the documents are handwritten and difficult to read. Also, while some lawmakers keep detailed calendar entries of their legislative duties, others leave calendar pages blank or give descriptions of work that is so vague it’s difficult to decipher how it was government related. Many of the lawmakers claimed that more than half the government-related work in a one-month period involved monitoring news or responding to emails.

Anita Daly, a Saratoga County supervisor from Clifton Park, listed 2.5 hours of work on a 2010 time sheet for attending a Republican fundraiser at Saratoga National Golf Club. Daniel Lewza, a supervisor in Milton, included entries that a state comptroller’s official acknowledged were too vague, including private meetings with bank officials that listed no details of what business was discussed.

The calendar for Lewza, who did not respond to requests for comment, also showed entries for a doctor’s appointment and haircut, although it’s unclear if he included those hours in his legislative work.

Lee Carman, an Albany County legislator from Guilderland, filed time sheets last year indicating that just eight of the 106.5 legislative hours he logged in February 2012 involved county meetings. Carman, a senior vice president with Kinderhook Bank, listed his remaining legislative work as 58 hours of “news,” 38 hours of “correspondence” and three hours for a “minority caucus,” which is considered a political commitment and not government work.

On June 19, less than a week after the Times Union submitted some time sheets to the state comptroller’s office for comment, including a copy of Carman’s public calendar, the agency sent a letter to the Albany County Legislature stating that Carman and 19 other legislators, including Morse, had listed ineligible work activities such as political and social events, travel, union elections, breakfasts and “constituent events for which there is no official business reason for the elected official’s attendance.”

The comptroller also flagged four Albany County legislators — Merton Simpson, Sean Ward, Bryan Clenahan and Deborah Busch — for not filing any record of activities. Another, Travis Stevens, submitted a one-month record of activity instead of the required three-month sample, the comptroller’s office said.

Carman, in his third term, said he’s not certain what he’s paid as a legislator ($21,752), and that he’s not counting on the retirement benefits, although he did submit the record of activities required to participate in the pension system.

“I’ve worked in the private sector my whole entire life,” he said. “The retirement, none of it means anything to me. It’s not doing anything for me whatsoever. … I’ve never viewed it as a full-time job.” 

In Albany County, the legislators are also offered another perk for their full-time status: health insurance coverage. Carman said he and his family are covered under his wife’s health insurance plan — she’s an education administrator — and he does not accept a $2,000 bonus that’s paid to any legislator who declines the county’s health insurance package. But most of them do take the health coverage, which can be worth more than $20,000 annually, or the $2,000 stipend if they have their own insurance.

Morse, who’s paid $39,000 a year as chairman, said he takes the $2,000 insurance stipend because, he said, it’s offered and he’s already covered by the Cohoes city health plan.

As for his workload, Morse said he thinks county legislators earn their benefits and salaries. He said he estimates he puts in up to 80 hours a week on legislative business.

“I think overall, legislators certainly put in the hours that are required to get their actual time and I think they do an enormous amount of constituent work,” he said. “I’m on the phone constantly. … Every single night I go through all of the papers to make sure I’m current on all of the events. ‘I return a majority of my phone calls. I spend an enormous about of time sending emails, reading emails, writing emails.”

Each county has different rules. In Rensselaer County, for instance, members of the legislature receive no money if they decline to take the county’s health care coverage. And not all of them believe they should be classified as “full time” and receive a government pension.

Leon Fiacca, a legislator from North Greenbush, said he opted out of the retirement system before DiNapoli instituted enhanced reporting requirements four years ago.

“I was in town government prior … but I refused it (as a county lawmaker),” said Fiacca, who runs a beverage-center business. “I was stunned at the difficulty of getting out of the pension fund.”

Fiacca, who annually is paid about $20,000 as a county legislator, said he doesn’t believe lawmakers should receive pension benefits “unless they work full time, like a sheriff.” He added that perks like public health insurance packages “brings out better people” to run for office, but he added that public officials should be required to pay 50 percent of those health care costs. Fiacca said he currently pays about 30 percent of the county’s health care plan.

The difficulty in reforming the system, said McMahon, who is a close observer of state government, is that legislators tasked with negotiating health and pension benefits with are themselves the beneficiaries of the system. “They’re implicating themselves in it,” McMahon said. “In other words, if you want to impose a bigger health-insurance contribution on everybody, well, invariably, the local legislature has to impose a larger contribution on itself. … Where is the incentive?”

McMahon said that the reforms enacted by the state comptroller’s office four years ago were a “very light cosmetic treatment” but he does not cast blame on DiNapoli. “What is he going to do? His obligation here is not that clear other than to say you are or are not qualified for a pension.”