AG to crack down on more “double dipping”
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- May
- 15
Attorney General Andrew Cuomo just announced he is expanding his “double dipping” investigation on pension fraud by requesting information from each of New York’s 685 public-school districts on hiring retired officials who had already been receiving public pensions. (He had previously sought this information just from Long Island districts.)
Cuomo’s office is looking for “double dippers” engaged in fraudulent activity and has been investigating local governments and special districts in addition to school districts.
Cuomo the Legislature will hold a public hearing next Thursday on the pension-fund investigation.
“New Yorkers need to know that their tax dollars on not being wasted on state benefits for those who do not deserve them,” he said in a statement.
Cuomo has been probing a number of cases in which lawyers have been on the the payrolls of the Boards of Cooperative Educational Services for so long, or were on so many school districts’ or BOCES’ payrolls for so long, that they accumulated a lot of credits in the state Employees’ Retirement System. They were allowed to “double dip” because they were earning salaries and pensions at the same time.
Last week, the attorney general announced settlement agreements with a western New York law firm and an Albany-area attorney—the lawyers ended their “improper employment arrangements” and rescinded all public benefits they had received.

Jay Gallagher has covered Albany for Gannett News Service since 1984 and has been Albany Bureau chief since 1989. He`s a native of the Boston area and likes to point out that in this millennium, the score is Red Sox 1 championship, the Yankees 0.
Cara Matthews has been a statehouse correspondent in the Albany Bureau since August 2005. Prior to that, she covered Putnam County government and politics at The Journal News for nearly five years. Before that, she worked at newspapers in Connecticut and covered the state Legislature for one of them. 







