Lawyers ordered to repay nearly $200,000 to state
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- January
- 13
State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today that he has rescinded the New York State and Local Retirement System service credit of two more attorneys who were erroneously reported as employees by school districts and municipalities when they were actually independent contractors. That brings the total to 48 people who have lost service credit or membership in the system since the agency began a review.
The two lawyers are John Mowry of Central New York and A. Thomas Levin of Long Island. Mowry was reported as an employee by Mexico Academy and Central School District and the Village of Mexico in Oswego County. The school districts reported him as a full-time employee for more than 25 years, and the village had him as a part-time employee for eight years. The district and village did not supervise or control how Mowry did his work and did not give him office space. DiNapoli’s office notified Mowry, who retired in 2002 with a $30,958 annual pension, that he must repay $136,716 to the Retirement System.
On Long Island, the Village of North Hills incorrectly reported Levin as an employee for 19 years, according to DiNapoli. The attorney did not work set hours or submit time sheets. Besides paying his law firm, the village continued paying Levin through the payroll system for 10 years after he retired in July 1999 with an annual pension of $9,536. DiNapoli’s office told Levin he has to repay $59,003 to the Retirement System.
The two attorneys have a right to request an administrative hearing.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 11:21 am by Cara Matthews.
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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. 
