The office that oversees retirement benefits for state workers in New York is taking heat for suggesting on its website that employees pad their pensions by working lots of overtime.
A spokesman for State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said that his office is making changes to the web page.
“We’re not encouraging the use of overtime to increase pensions,” Dennis Tompkins told the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester. “It may have been some unfortunate language, but we have an obligation to inform members of the law and regulations surrounding the calculation of their pension.”
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New York is in a major cash crunch and has been under pressure to cut labor costs.
The how-to guide had also suggested that workers stockpile vacation time as a way of boosting benefits.
Both practices have been criticized by state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as abuses of the system.
With Associated Press.
