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ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo expressed “shock” not once but three times yesterday after The Post disclosed that 28 State Police officials secretly received huge wage increases last month amid the state’s worsening fiscal crisis.
“I was surprised and I was shocked, as I think most New Yorkers were,” said Cuomo, who cut his own pay and that of many of his top aides 5 percent after taking office.
“I think it’s insensitive. That’s why I was surprised, and that’s why I was shocked, and that’s why I’m reviewing it,” Cuomo continued.
“Surprise and shock,” he said at another point.
Cuomo said he had ordered a review of the pay hikes, with an eye toward rolling them back.
The Post disclosed yesterday that the entire top echelon of the scandal-scarred State Police received pay hikes as high as 18 percent in December, even as then-Gov. David Paterson warned of a $9 billion budget gap and was about to fire 900 state workers.
The raises totaled nearly $600,000 and were authorized by acting State Police Superintendent John Melville, who received a $20,394-a-year hike, to $179,756.
The post of first deputy superintendent, which was filled Jan. 4 by Cuomo’s nominee to head the State Police, Joseph D’Amico, received the largest salary hike, $28,077, bringing the annual pay to $182,756.
But an aide to Cuomo told The Post that D’Amico, who is awaiting Senate confirmation, was unaware of the pay hike and would instead take the far lower legally set salary paid to a State Police superintendent, $136,000 a year.
State Police officials justified the pay hikes by claiming a newly negotiated contract with the force’s Supervisors Unit increased salaries of police majors to an amount equal to or higher than the pay received by their supervisors.
Assistant Deputy Superintendent Terence O’Mara claimed that the salary difference would make it difficult to promote majors to higher positions “without undue hardship to those personnel who have shown they possess the best qualities of leadership. ”
But many top state officials — commissioners and other heads of agencies — routinely make less than their deputies.
The State Police’s reputation has recently suffered from a range of scandals, including Troopergate, when investigators were used to gather supposedly damaging information on former Gov. Spitzer’s political foe, and the David Johnson/Sherr-una Booker affair, when the chief of Paterson’s security detail attempted to prevent a Bronx hospital worker from filing assault charges against a Paterson aide.