Out of control

The Poughkeepsie (N.Y) Journal: Amid all the charts, the mounds of data-related evidence, the wealth of facts and figures and personal stories, the Poughkeepsie Journal’s “The Public Pays” investigative series points to some simple truths:

Public employee salary and benefits have gotten out of control.

The private sector isn’t keeping apace to help pay for these excesses.

Dubious practices, such as “pension padding,” are exacerbating the situation and must be curtailed, promptly.

The two-part series by investigative reporter Mary Beth Pfeiffer put profound local color on a statewide problem: New York taxpayers are handing over oodles of money to fund public-employee salaries and pensions. They deserve more efficiency from government — and they certainly shouldn’t be duped in the process.

But fleecing has been occurring, in particular with pension padding. Here is how it works: Public employees are able to inflate their pensions by significantly increasing overtime hours in the last few years of employment. This outlandish scenario can occur because pension amounts are based on employees’ total income, not their base salary.

That has to change. Pensions should be capped, and they should be based on base salary, not whether public employees are able to finagle extraordinary amounts of overtime in the last few years before retiring.

The state attorney general’s office has been looking into this matter and had sent out letters requesting payroll information from the Arlington and Fairview fire districts, the cities of Poughkeepsie and Beacon, Ulster and Dutchess county governments and the Town of Ulster in Ulster County.

The state has to restore some balance to a situation that is sheer madness.