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ALBANY — Happy retirement! See you next Monday!
The Paterson administration put nearly 200 state employees back on the public payroll this month — just days after giving them a lucrative early-retirement bonus intended to thin the government ranks and save money, The Post has learned.
The 193 “retirees” allowed to rejoin state service ranged from university secretaries to budget analysts to at least one member of Gov. Paterson’s staff, according to data provided by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.
The employees were brought back as hourly workers, allowing them to keep largely the same jobs they had before without passing up the mother of all pension sweeteners: this year’s early-retirement program.
Paterson’s former assistant appointments officer, Kathryn Weaver, for instance, was rehired as a $35-an-hour “confidential assistant” in the same office less than a month after taking the retirement offer.
Between her wages and pension, Weaver could conceivably make as much as, if not more than, she did in her original $91,600-a-year post. The move, however, shifts much of the cost from the payroll to the pension fund.
Paterson spokesman Morgan Hook said Weaver works two days a week helping the appointments office prepare for the incoming governor. Her job will be eliminated at the end of Paterson’s term, Hook said.
“Ultimately, taxpayers are winning out on this deal,” Hook said. “They’re getting someone with 39 years of state service to do what amounts to the same job at part-time pay.”
Budget Division spokesman Erik Kriss said the rehires were limited to employees who were in the middle of projects or who performed seasonal duties requiring temporary workers.
The early-retirement incentive approved by Paterson and the Legislature earlier this year trimmed more than 3,600 employees from the state workforce, but the program has been criticized as a costly alternative to layoffs. It promised employees up to three years of extra-pension credit if they agreed to leave the payroll by Sept. 28.
The Post reported earlier this week that DiNapoli allowed a politically connected top aide to take the retirement bonus even though Paterson had warned against the move.
E.J. McMahon, of the business-backed think tank Manhattan Institute, said the state’s guaranteed-benefit pension system “invites gaming,” like rehiring recent retirees.
“Everything you’re seeing are natural responses to the rules by which this pension system operates,” McMahon said. “Until you change them for good, it’s going to continue.”