Craig Johnson Announces Taxpayer Abuse Assessment Legislation
By Mike Connery on 04/13/2010 @ 07:07 PM
Craig Johnson announced new legislation today that would end one of the more glaring misappropriations of tax payer dollars. As it currently stands, the state and municipalities are paying millions of dollars in pensions to former employees who used their positions to embezzle money.
The proviso in New York’s public pension system that ensures even convicted embezzlers can continue to collect retirement benefits has long been a sore point with a lot of people, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Long Island community of Roslyn where the former school superintendent Frank Tassone fleeced taxpayers for more than $2 million and was sent to prison in 2006.
Now, a pair of Long Island Democrats, Sen. Craig Johnson and Assemblyman Charles Lavine, are offering a measure that could end this benefit — not by changing constitutionally protected pension laws — but by calling for an assessment or tax on the pensions of criminals who abused public monies. The “taxpayer abuse assessment” would be equal to the annual pension of the person in question.
At a time when the state and local municipalities are pinching pennies to get by, we can't afford to subsidize the retirements of criminals who stole from taxpayers.
Here's Johnson discussing the legislation:
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