Homeless staffer for James Sanders got stiffed by N.Y. Senate

 

Queens Eagle

A former staffer for Queens State Sen. James Sanders Jr. says he is missing weeks of back pay, money he needs to buy food and do laundry while living in a Manhattan homeless shelter.

Larry Malcolm Smith Jr., 22, began working as a constituent liaison for Sanders on September 9, according to an email welcoming him to the district office team. He worked for the Queens senator until resigning in November, Sanders’ office confirmed.

Smith said he received two paychecks, one by mail and another through direct deposit, during his time representing Sanders in Southeast Queens and the Rockaways but is still missing about five weeks of pay. A Senate official confirmed the missing payment.

Smith said he has lived in a shelter for months and needs the money for pay for basic necessities.

“I have no money at all. I have no money for food. I have no money for laundry,” Smith told the Eagle.

“I was supposed to make $35,000 a year. I’ve been manipulated, I’ve been disrespected. I live in a shelter,” he added. “Nobody is helping me.”

City employees penalized for absence

From the Daily News:

Thousands of city employees who’ve been docked vacation time during the past week say the city should give them a break.

“It was very upsetting because we felt that everything that happened was out of our control. The storm was an act of nature,” said a hospital worker who said she couldn’t get from her home in the Bronx to Queens for her job.

Mayor Bloomberg ordered all city employees to report to work throughout the week – despite devastation from a hurricane and the challenge of commuting without buses or subways.

That’s proved next to impossible for some, who will lose vacation days as a result.

From the Huffington Post:

Their options were quite simple. Ride a bike through a hurricane (yes, there were 75 mile-per-hour winds and pouring rain), walk to work (because three hours in the pouring rain is a safe bet), or hitchhike. Any idiot needed only to look out of his window to realize how ridiculous a task this was - not to mention how unsafe any of the available options were.

Just as Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo, and the Office of Emergency Management were advising people to stay off the streets, avoid transportation, and be cautious, they were sending their own employees to work. Talk about double standards.

What was the penalty for choosing to avoid putting oneself in harm's way by walking to work during a hurricane?

Employees were told that their absence would be counted as personal leave days. I read this as: "You'd better show up to work, and if you don't, we'll mark you absent." An entire city is shut down because of a storm that the Mayor himself describes as one of the worst in the city's history, and employees are penalized for not putting themselves in danger. This is an outrage.

To redress this, Mayor Bloomberg must take three steps.

First, he ought to issue a formal apology to all City employees who were unnecessarily forced either go to work, or use their personal leave days, on Monday and Tuesday. Second, he ought to compensate those who did attend work by paying them for overtime. Finally, he should return the personal leave days to those who chose to stay at home.

Full-time pay for part-time work

From the Daily News:

It really pays to be a part-time staffer in the state Legislature.

In one of Albany’s dirty little secrets, some of the Legislature’s highest-paid employees aren’t required to work anywhere near full-time hours — but pull in salaries and benefits as if they did.

These workers — 345 in the state Senate, 271 in the Assembly — enjoy a special annual designation that lowers the mandatory number of hours they must work each week, compared with 35-hour weeks most employees put in.

The advantage, little known to the taxpaying public, is that having fewer required work-hours can free up these staffers to do campaign work that legally can’t be done while punched in on the state clock, insiders say. Or, in other cases, the workers are able to focus on their nongovernment side jobs.

“How does that benefit the public?” questioned Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/New York.

“It raises questions as to whether this is a scheme to subsidize political activities on the taxpayers’ dime,” she added.

Of the 345 Senate staffers who get the special designation, 267 work for the GOP majority, and 78 toil for Democrats, according to the latest payroll records. Some 56 of the Senate “part-timers” take home at least $50,000 — and seven of them make more than $100,000.

We're the poorest big city in America

From the Daily News:

I hate to break it to you, New Yorkers, but you're not as rich as you think.

Your median family income of $56,000 looks decent on paper - ranking 19th in the country. But you're burning through those paychecks to cover some of the highest taxes, housing costs, energy bills, health premiums and grocery prices in the country.

Factor in that sky-high cost of living, and New York's real income drops below $41,000. That's the lowest in the country, behind Mississippi at $45,000.

And real income in the five boroughs ranks lower than Detroit's.

That's right, New Yorkers. You're living in the poorest big city in America.

Council staffers receive pay raise

CITY COUNCIL GIVES STAFF 8 PERCENT RAISES
By SALLY GOLDENBERG, NY Post

The City Council followed in lockstep with Mayor Bloomberg yesterday, announcing an 8 percent raise for all staff members this year.

The raises match those the mayor gave to his non-union staff following a contract with the city's largest municipal union, District Council 37.

They will go into effect immediately. One will be a 4-percent raise retroactive to March 2008 and the other 4-percent increase will date back to March of this year.

The Council could not immediately say how much the raises would cost.

Oh, how cute!

From AM-NY:

To say that Michael Bloomberg collects $1 a year to be the city’s mayor would not be accurate.

That would require him actually cashing his checks.

Bloomberg, who foregoes a $225,000 annual mayoral salary, keeps his paychecks as souvenirs, said his spokesman, Stu Loeser. Bloomberg has often joked that his failure to cash his checks is throwing off the city’s accounting books by nearly $1 a year.

Don't you wish you could afford to keep your paychecks as souvenirs?