Top CUNY administrators have aced their lessons on multiplying — their salaries.
Executives are getting around state rules that place strict limits on “double dipping” and are pulling down two six-figure salaries every year.
Marc Shaw retired as a senior CUNY vice chancellor in 2013 at age 59 and began collecting his $131,614 pension.
Last year Shaw, who had been first deputy to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and advisor to former Gov. David Paterson, was named CUNY’s interim COO.
Rather than CUNY paying him directly, his $250,000 salary comes from the CUNY Research Foundation, which is a non-profit that receives taxpayer funds.
By paying him through the foundation, CUNY circumvented a requirement that state retirees younger than 65 need a special waiver in order to earn more than $30,000 in income from a state job.
A CUNY spokesman said Shaw was asked to continue working because of his “extraordinary talent and understanding of public policy and finance.”
Two other retirees joined CUNY before they turned 65 and were paid with Research Foundation money, circumventing the waiver process, public records show.
- Burton Sacks, who is now 70, spent three decades with the now defunct New York City Board of Education and was its former chief executive. His pension comes to $160,138 a year. He joined CUNY in 2008, and his salary as deputy vice chancellor for operations — now $198,197 — comes from the Research Foundation.
- Judith Bergtraum, 68, who joined CUNY in 2007 and is vice chancellor for facilities planning, construction and management, gets a $153,598 pension from her time in city government, including a stint as a deputy commissioner in the Department of Transportation. She is paid $215,000 for her CUNY job, with all but $61,000 of her salary coming from the Research Foundation.
The state Inspector General has been investigating non-profit foundations affiliated with CUNY schools. The Research Foundation is funded mostly with government grants.
The waivers for retirees are difficult to secure and designed for those jobs that would be hard to fill.
“There are people who legitimately retire and leave and then get recruited to come back and maybe they do fill a position for a year or something while try and hire the right person,” said Tim Hoefer, the executive director of the Empire Center for Public Policy. “That’s the way the waivers were designed to work. That’s not how it is in practice currently.”
A CUNY spokesman defended the double dipping for the honchos saying “without an incentive to keep them out of retirement, it would be nearly impossible to bring on or retain staff who, because of their wealth of experience and expertise, are uniquely qualified for critical roles within the university.”
The spokesman said that as part of reform efforts to “create greater transparency” all of the administrators except Shaw will be paid with state money as of May.