BEDFORD, N.Y. — A nurse at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women who raked in more than $630,000 in overtime in less than five years more than tripled her pension, leaving taxpayers to fund her more costly retirement, The Journal News has found.

Mercy Mathew, 62, of Pomona, who resigned last October after working a total of more than 13 years for the state, receives a $45,534 pension based on her final average salary of $211,754, according to the Office of the State Comptroller.

Mathew’s base salary was $58,468 but she made far more than that, including for a period where her time cards show her working 192 days straight, mostly for 16.5-hour overnight shifts.

That much overtime drove her pension 3.6 times higher than it would have been based on her regular salary alone.

Mathew made $150,630 in overtime in 2012 and $171,814 in overtime in 2009, making her the state’s top overtime earner in both those years. Her designated work schedule was 3-11 p.m., but she routinely stayed until 7:30 a.m. the next day without a break, according to her time cards. The Journal News obtained the records after winning an appeal of a denial of its Freedom of Information Law request filed with the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

Mathew could not be reached for comment.

The Corrections Department and other state agencies need to keep in mind the short- and long-term burden to taxpayers as they operate, said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative government watchdog group.

“Every decision you make that has to do with a public employee goes back to a taxpayer,” said Hoefer. “With only 13 years of service, $45,000 is pretty significant.”

Officials at the state Public Employees Federation, a union that has represented Mathew, have not responded to numerous requests for comment. Corrections Department spokeswoman Linda Foglia earlier would not answer questions about the seemingly impossible number of hours Mathew worked, including whether she slept at the prison, why her constant presence there was needed or if the DOC ever questioned her time cards. She had no immediate comment Wednesday on the pension issue.

The state’s retirement benefit is based on years of service, age at retirement and final average salary, according to Matthew Sweeney, a spokesman for the state Comptroller’s Office. The final average salary is the average of the employee’s earnings from his or her three consecutive highest-paid years, Sweeney said.

Mathew, a registered nurse, worked at the state’s only maximum security prison for women for a little less than five years and had worked on and off for the state since October 1986, the comptroller’s office said.

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