ALBANY Raucci pension could go to victims State office takes action to freeze benefits BY STEVEN COOK Gazette Reporter
Convicted arsonist Steven Raucci’s pension, once viewed as untouchable, may in fact be reachable by his victims, according to a new court fi ling. Two of Raucci’s victims are now asking a judge to freeze much of Raucci’s pension payments, which top $5,000 each month. They’re using a relatively little-known portion of a well-known law in their attempt: the Son of Sam Law. The state Office of Victim Services filed papers last month in state Supreme Court in Albany County to freeze the pension payments under the Son of Sam Law’s nearly decade-old provision to help victims get access to “funds of a convicted person.” The 2001 changes were aimed at ensuring that victims knew when convicted criminals came into money and allowing them to sue related to the crimes. Lawmakers identifi ed gifts, inheritances, lottery winnings, judgments in civil lawsuits or investment income as areas where money could be sought. The Son of Sam Law itself resulted in the Office of Victim Services winning injunctions against 27 convicts last year alone, an office spokesman said, representing a total amount of assets frozen at $2.6 million. The reasons behind those injunctions and other ones granted over the years were not readily available last week, offi ce spokesman John Watson said. And how unusual it is for the office to go after pension benefits was unclear. But Watson, speaking generally about such cases, said the frequency isn’t the issue. “The provisions that expanded the law are meant to go after all sources of outside income,” Watson said. “Whether or not some- thing is unique isn’t important. It’s whether we think we have the ability to do it. And we certainly wouldn’t do something if we didn’t think we had the ability to do it.” ................>>>>................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01301&AppName=1
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McQueen
September 26, 2010, 6:45am
Guest User
Now if someone could figure out how to take back the $100,000+ parting gift Ely received and all the other buyouts the Raucci crew stole from the taxpayers. Makes me sick that $5,000 a month of the over-taxed Schenectady dollars are going to supply this criminals smokes and doritos in the slammer.
It’s one thing for a convicted felon like Steven Raucci to collect his public pension while he serves time in prison but entirely another when the pension wasn’t obtained legitimately — as may have been the case with the Schenectady school district’s former building and grounds superintendent. Raucci is being paid roughly the equivalent of his $79,000 salary — 40 percent more than he would have collected had he not racked up tens of thousands of dollars in overtime in the years immediately before his 2009 retirement. Such extreme pension padding — Raucci claimed more than $50,000 in OT in his last year on the job — is not generally illegal, though Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has made an issue of it and has pledged to do something about the problem if he becomes governor. But in Raucci’s case, there’s reason to suspect he didn’t actually work the OT. During his trial, a couple of underlings claim he forced them to work while he took credit for it. Thus Cuomo really doesn’t have to become governor to do something about this particular case: The sworn testimony, as well as a state comptroller’s offi ce audit criticizing the school district for not verifying Raucci’s OT claims, should be all he needs to launch an investigation. Why hasn’t he? .................>>>>..............................>>>>.....................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00902&AppName=1
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