ALBANY — “Thank God it’s Thursday!”
A longtime state prison system employee could face criminal charges after watchdogs revealed yesterday that he took a three-day weekend — every week for 17 years.
The probe by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Inspector General Joseph Fisch found that correction officials looked the other way as Howard Dean — a retired food-services director — fleeced the state treasury out of nearly $500,000 with the phony scheme and a host of ill-gotten perks.
About $230,000 of that was the fifth day of the week that Dean was supposed to work but didn’t. Probers said he needs to pay back the taxpayers and are looking at going after his pension.
The yearlong investigation discovered that Dean, 64, of upstate Locke, routinely submitted — and supervisors at the Department of Correctional Services regularly approved — deceitful time cards with no clue to the weekly furloughs.
Dean “freely admitted” to playing hooky from the state’s Food Production Center in Rome, the report found.
“This certainly gives new meaning to the phrase ‘casual Fridays,’ ” DiNapoli told reporters yesterday.
“He not only dressed down, he didn’t even bother to show up. Quite simply, this is outrageous.”
The watchdogs blasted correction officials for either approving — or failing to catch — a host of perks that appeared intended to compensate Dean for taking on a new responsibility for a food facility in 1992 without getting a raise.
Dean later received two bumps in pay and continued to receive the perks until shortly before his August 2008 retirement.
“One can liken this to a robbery without a gun, with his supervisors serving as lookouts,” Fisch said.
Supervisors listed Dean’s official work station as Albany so he could wrongly bill the state for $240,000 in travel expenses, investigators found.
He also charged taxpayers for 75 stays at the local Quality Inn on nights E-ZPass records suggest he was at home.
Dean earned an annual salary of $112,743 for running the facility that provides three hot meals a day to 57,000 inmates. He draws a $57,381 state pension.
Correction spokesman Erik Kriss noted correction officials revoked most of Dean’s perks after Commissioner Brian Fischer took over the agency in 2007.
Dean’s one-time supervisor, Russell DiBello, told The Post he wasn’t aware Dean was skipping out Fridays but said the former food manager earned “flexibility” by saving the state $28 million in reduced food costs.