Newsday reports:
Frank Tassone earns $1.05 a day working as a porter at the Mid-State Correctional Facility in upstate Oneida. Cleaning toilets and shower stalls, he is far from his comfortable days as the superintendent of the Roslyn school district, where he enjoyed lavish meals on the taxpayers, gambling junkets and frequent conferences in such playgrounds as Las Vegas.
But Tassone, 61, needn't worry about having enough spending money for the prison commissary. In spite of his conviction for stealing $2.2 million from the school district, which put him behind bars for 4 to 12 years, Tassone can count on his annual New York State pension of $173,495 arriving at regular intervals in his bank account. He gets that in monthly installments of $14,457.92.
And, New York State law being what it is, he'll continue to get that public pension for the rest of his life.
"It is unconscionable that a guy like Frank Tassone can collect a six-figure income while he's in jail for stealing from his employer," said E.J. McMahon, a pension expert from the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a pro-business think tank in Albany.
State records show that Tassone is one of the top 20 pension earners among school administrators in the state. And as a felon collecting a generous state pension, he is not alone.
You ask why is this legal? Newsday explains:
These felons benefit from a New York State constitutional guarantee that says if a public employee is entitled to a state pension for his or her years of service, those retirement benefits cannot be diminished or taken away, even after a felony conviction. Unlike several other states, New York has no statute providing for the forfeiture of pension benefits if someone is convicted of a crime.
Several attempts by Republican lawmakers to change that to allow forfeiture of pensions for public officials convicted of crimes have for years gone nowhere in the State Legislature in Albany as employee unions have fought against them, experts say.
Government workers sure are powerful.So powerful they sneak things in state constitutions to loot taxpayers.
