The Niagara Falls school maintenance worker who was allowed to resign after he was found

doing private contracting work at the homes of district officials while on school time was

given added benefits in the years before he left, as well as when he quit.

Jeffrey B. Pasquantino received more than a month's worth of extra sick days during the

last few years he was on the job. He also got more than $12,000 in stipends during those

years.

Those payments were given without authorization or explanation, a spokeswoman for State

Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli told The Buffalo News, and auditors flagged them when they

released a 2008 audit that harshly criticized the district for misspending and weaknesses in

its financial controls.

"These weaknesses could have allowed illegal acts to occur," comptroller spokeswoman Nicole

Hanks wrote in an e-mail, "and our auditors discussed this with federal law enforcement

officials."

A portrait of Pasquantino — a maintenance worker and union president —

continues to emerge since The Buffalo News first reported details of his side jobs while on

the district's clock last Sunday.

For the 2007-08 school year, his take-home pay was $95,777 — nearly twice what

district officials said Pasquantino was being paid at the time of his resignation earlier this

year.

He left the district with about $25,000 for unused sick and personal time.

He also was paid for 31 unused vacation days.

He accrued most of that paid vacation time and some of the sick time while on paid

leave, after he was accused last spring of doing the side jobs on district time, according to

attendance records.

Although the former school superintendent said Pasquantino had been suspended

previously for two or three days for being away from his school job, a review of attendance

records indicates Pasquantino served no two- or three-day suspension.

Related: Private work for former superintendent is found on Falls School District time

Related: In Falls, off the job while on the clock

Related: Questions remain in Pasquantino case

The district allowed Pasquantino to resign in January after receiving a private

investigator's report, and Niagara County District Attorney Michael J. Violante decided not to

pursue charges against him.

Made more than boss

In all, Pasquantino received 33 sick days for which there was no authorization, the state

comptroller's office said. The sick days apparently would have come between between July 2005

and December 2007, the period covered by the audit.

When contacted by The News, Pasquantino's lawyer, Nicholas Pelosino, said that his client

often worked on days that he called in sick.

Pasquantino also got a $1,300 stipend with no formal authorization from school officials,

as well as an $8,500 stipend during the 2007-08 school year that was unexplained in district

records, according to the comptroller and district payroll records.

During his last full school year on the job, Pasquantino made more than his supervisor,

Lawrence W. Beyer, who took home $81,400, according to district payroll records obtained by

The Buffalo News through a Freedom of Information request in 2008.

The payment for unused sick and personal time, known as "terminal pay," is available under

the contract with the Civil Service Employees Association unit, officials said.

Most employees receive 18 paid sick days per year, said Barbara Joyce, the district's

personnel director. Unused days roll over from year to year, and there is a cap of 324 total

days that can be turned in for cash compensation, Joyce said.

Pasquantino, 49, is the former president of Local 7696,Civil Service Employees

Association, and worked for the district for 28 years before he resigned.

The comptroller's office review of district financial information occurred in early 2008,

and auditors discussed their findings with the School Board twice in August of that year,

before the official release of the report that October.

William J. Hochul Jr., who became U.S. attorney for Western New York last month, said it is

standard for his office not to comment on whether any investigation may be taking place or has

taken place.

Angelo Massaro, attorney for the school district, was asked last week about the extra sick

days and the stipends.

"I doubt if that occurred," Massaro said of the extra sick time. He also said he was not

aware of any issues with stipends.

Pasquantino did private contracting work from May 2004 to November 2006 — often while

he was on district time — for several district employees, including then-Superintendent

Carmen A. Granto, according to a private investigators' report.

He was followed by PROBE Services of Cheektowaga on at least 45 days over that time period,

and was found off school property on all but six of those days. His stops also included malls,

gas stations, banks, restaurants, a barbershop, a car audio store and Off-Track Betting

parlors.

Document: Full, unredacted PROBE Services report on Jeffrey Pasquantino

Document: 2008 State Comptrollers audit of Niagara Falls school district

No forced time off

Private investigators saw him leaving Granto's Cayuga Island home on June 7, 2004,

according to the investigators' report, which was sent to the district in May 2008.

They found his truck parked outside when they arrived at 12:15 p.m. that day. Pasquantino,

dressed in white shorts and work boots, left about 30 minutes later, the report said.

Granto initially told The Buffalo News any work Pasquantino did at his home was done on

days off or vacation time.

Granto, who retired at the start of 2009 and was succeeded by his sister, Cynthia Bianco,

has said he received pictures in the mail while he was superintendent that showed Pasquantino

was not working while on the clock for the district. A district review found the time

Pasquantino was shown not working totaled about 45 minutes, and a five-day recommended

suspension was cut to two or three days, Granto said.

The former superintendent said he could not pinpoint when he received the photographs or

when this suspension occurred.

A review of attendance records since July 2003 indicates Pasquantino served no two- or

three-day suspension. Records indicate no forced time off until May 2009, after the district

received the report by PROBE Services of Cheektowaga.

The News received an unredacted copy of the investigators' report Thursday. A copy with

private addresses blacked out previously had been turned over to the newspaper by the Niagara

County Attorney's office through an appeal of a Freedom of Information request.

In addition to Granto's home, Pasquantino worked at the homes of Maria Chille-Zafuto,

principal of Cataract Elementary, and Judith A. Deull and Dianne L. Havens, both teachers in

the district.

Chille-Zafuto told The News at least a dozen school officials' names were tied to

Pasquantino's work.

The Lewiston home of Robert M. DiFrancesco, a former principal in the Falls district and

currently the principal at Niagara Catholic High School, also was described in the

investigators' report. His Perry Court home was under construction at the time, the report

said.

"The information provided in that report, to the best of my knowledge, is accurate,"

DiFrancesco told The News on Friday. "And he did provide a service at my house." He declined

to answer any other questions.

Part of the 2008 state audit of the district focused on stipends given to maintenance

department employees for 10 years after a memorandum of understanding between the district and

the union expired.

Robert Freeman, Executive Director NYS Committee of the Committee on Open Government, talks about the privacy exception to documents available under the state's Freedom of Information law, and when it applies:

Freeman says the privacy exception was not applicable with regard to the PROBE Services report given to the Niagara Falls School District:

The average stipend in the department was nearly $1,100, and the total amount paid over the

two recent school years was nearly $108,000, according to the audit.

"Contrary to the explicit provisions of the [memorandum of understanding]," auditors wrote

in 2008, "the district continued to distribute this stipend from 1998 to the present day."

Pasquantino's roughly $1,300 stipend referenced by the comptroller was given in at least

three recent school years, according to payroll records.

In their written response to the audit, district officials said it was understood by both

the administration and the union that the stipends would continue to be paid to the

maintenance workers. That was even though, school officials wrote, copies of the memorandum

were not attached to subsequent contracts and language from the memorandum was not included in

subsequent contracts.

Board member Arthur L. Jocoy Jr., who took office last July, said he does not blame any

district official or employee who had Pasquantino do any work for them, because they were

right to assume he was doing the job on his own time, not the district's.

A question of blame

Jocoy, who called the investigators' report "just a glimpse into two years of time," said

that while what Pasquantino was doing was wrong, the real fault lies with Pasquantino's

supervisors, who allowed him all that free time on the job.

"Who was the captain in charge of the ship when Jeffrey was off painting everybody's

house?" Jocoy said. "Jeff has a boss to answer to."

That boss was Beyer, and Beyer's boss was Granto, Jocoy said, stressing he was not pointing

fingers at any one person.

Beyer did not return a call to comment.

Jocoy said he believes the board made the right decision to allow Pasquantino to resign

because of the potential costs the district could have faced with a lengthy legal battle.

Even had Pasquantino been fired, state pension law says a person cannot be stripped of his

or her pension, said Lise Bang-Jensen, senior policy analyst for the Empire Center for New

York State Policy, an Albany-based think tank.

The earliest Pasquantino will be eligible to collect his pension is when he turns 55.