ALBANY — Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli gamed the state pension system to let a top aide and prominent Democratic activist score a plum retirement benefit over the Paterson administration’s protests, The Post has learned.
DiNapoli OK’d the “sweetheart deal” allowing Albany politico Nancy Burton to leave her $159,984-a-year deputy-comptroller post with a lucrative early-retirement bonus last month, even though budget officials were rejecting similar high-level retirements across state government.
Worse, some of Burton’s own subordinates — coincidentally in the Division of Retirement Services — had been turned down for the incentive because their workload was too great.
“People were upset because they were deemed essential and were prohibited from participating in the retirement incentive,” said a source. “And she gets a sweetheart deal basically to pad her pension.”
The revelation comes barely a week before DiNapoli faces an election battle with Republican Harry Wilson, a former hedge-fund executive who has criticized the comptroller’s stewardship of the $125 billion pension fund.
Burton’s retirement required some bureaucratic sleight-of-hand. She quit her job as assistant deputy comptroller, then entered a civil-service post that had been left vacant since she was elected Albany city comptroller in 1993.
Then, she retired from that $93,803-a-year job with three years of extra pension credits, the max allowed under the program. It all happened on Sept. 25.
DiNapoli spokesman Dennis Tompkins acknowledged “some calculations clerks were upset” by Burton’s retirement deal, but said it saved money.
“It’s not filled and it’s not going to be filled,” Tompkins said of the six-figure deputy-comptroller job. “So, in a sense, we’re saving the taxpayers two jobs.”
But Budget Division spokesman Erik Kriss said the administration criticized the deal because such top jobs are vital and often wind up being filled.
Burton did not return a call for comment.
With Fredric U. Dicker