Gallagher quits Senate job after questions on pay hike
Was Stachowski aide but has full-time job
The pay raises that Democratic senators doled out to their staffs in recent weeks included a bump for Raymond F. Gallagher, who appeared on State Sen. William T. Stachowski’s payroll even though he holds a full-time job elsewhere.
Gallagher, a longtime political hand, also draws a state pension and serves as executive director of a company that, among other things, serves senior citizens through a county government contract.
Gallagher was serving as Stachowski’s part-time “special assistant.”
Until Thursday. That’s when Gallagher resigned from his state job as The Buffalo News inquired about what he does for Stachowski’s office.
Stachowski said Gallagher wasn’t willing to take on the additional duties now required. The Democrats took control of the State Senate this year, and the increased workload for their staffs has been used to justify the pay raises.
Gallagher was working just 7.5 hours a week for Stachowski. His pay was going up 17 percent, to $20,000 a year, or about $50 an hour.
“At his age he doesn’t feel he can pick up a higher workload,” Stachowski said, explaining Gallagher’s resignation. He turns 70 in a few days.
Before resigning, Gallagher told The News that to collect his pay he analyzed legislation, researched issues and stood in for Stachowski at community meetings. He rarely worked out of Stachowski’s local office.
“I am certainly well versed in the workings in Albany,” Gallagher said Wednesday. “I go down there two or three times a year. I don’t think you could say I was given a position without any background or knowledge of what I was doing.”
In fact, Gallagher, a former County Legislature chairman, served as a state senator before relinquishing his seat in the early 1980s to Stachowski.
Gallagher became chairman of the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, ran unsuccessfully for state comptroller and resigned from the NFTA amid a federal probe into the squeeze placed on NFTA employees to donate to then-Gov. Mario M. Cuomo’s campaign fund. He’s now an Erie Community College trustee and former board chairman.
So, on a few levels, Gallagher paid his dues.
“It does sound like a classic patronage position,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of the government watchdog Common Cause-New York. “I think most people, if you asked them, would they like a job in which they rarely have to show up and will get paid $20,000 a year, I think few people would turn it down. I think they would understand what it is — it’s a no-show job.”
If it was a no-show job — and Stachowski strongly disputes that — Gallagher would not have been alone in the annals of State Legislature history.
In the late 1980s, the Senate’s Democratic leader, Manfred Ohrenstein, was indicted on accusations that he carried no-show jobs on the payroll and ordered aides to work on personal and campaign- related duties, while taxpayers covered their salaries. He was found not guilty largely because the Legislature had never barred the practices of which he was accused.
Gallagher had worked for other Democratic senators: former Sen. Martin Connor of Brooklyn; Byron W. Brown when the mayor was a state senator; and David A. Paterson when he was the Senate minority leader.
Is it a no-show job?
“I absolutely disagree with that,” Stachowski said, emphasizing he would never agree to hire someone on those terms. He said Gallagher informs him on matters affecting Erie Community College and other concerns in the community, especially Lackawanna and the Southtowns, and he stands in for him at local government and school board meetings and community events.
“He comes in the office; he lets us know what is going on; he is more in the community. That was always our agreement,” Stachowski said Thursday from Albany.
“Ray has always been a hard worker with a wealth of government experience,” he said.
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