ALBANY – The New York Power Authority has quietly given two top executives ousted by Gov. Paterson rare golden parachutes worth nearly $300,000, The Post has learned.
Roger Kelley, the former authority president and CEO who was hired just over a year ago, received a package worth up to $178,141.
Thomas Kelly, the former authority executive vice president and general counsel, appointed 2 1/2 years ago, received $106,000, plus payment for unused vacation and sick leave time.
Kelley, who was being paid $270,000 a year, resigned effective Aug. 1 after being told that Paterson wanted new leadership at the nation’s largest state-owned power company.
Authority trustees agreed to pay Kelley $109,391 on Aug. 1 and up to $68,750 more if he doesn’t find “employment of a comparable level of compensation” by the end of next January, according to a copy of the agreement obtained by The Post under the Freedom of Information Law.
The authority also agreed to reimburse Kelley on a monthly basis for other unspecified costs – which the authority, claiming a “personal privacy” exemption under the law, refused to disclose.
Kelly resigned his $240,350-a-year post effective Aug. 8 after the authority’s trustees agreed to pay him $106,000 plus “accrued but unused vacation, sick and floating holiday time.”
Authority spokeswoman Christine Prichard called the payments “rare” but said they were deserved by the service to the agency provided by the two men.
A former senior authority official who is still close to the agency and alerted The Post to the severance packages, said: “It is a sad day when two people who spent only 36 months at the authority get to walk away with $300,000 after they are fired.”
The authority, still controlled by a board of trustees named by former Republican Gov. George Pataki, is viewed as a GOP patronage dumping ground by aides to Democrat Paterson.
It had also been a base of operations for former State Police Lt. Col. Daniel Wiese, a longtime Pataki aide who was ousted – without a severance package – last spring as the authority’s inspector general amid Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s probe of alleged political dirty tricks by rogue State Police officials.
“We need to get things turned around there,” a Paterson administration source told The Post.
But Paterson’s consideration of former Long Island Power Authority Executive Director Richard Kessel, a longtime Pataki activist with ties to the governor’s father’s Nassau County law firm, as Kelley’s replacement has raised concerns that political influence at the authority will continue.