BUFFALO (WBEN) - Earlier this month, a story surfaced about salaried Erie County administrators receiving a lot of overtime pay during the months of coronavirus crisis work.
A report issued by Erie County Comptroller Stefan Mychajliw showed political appointees in the County made $825,039 in overtime pay, including $441,655 in pay to the Erie County Sheriff's office, and $83,996 in overtime payments to Erie County Health Commissioner Dr. Gale Burstein.
To date, $3,174,477 of the $160 million in federal CARES Act funds has been spent on overtime for all Erie County workers.
On Tuesday morning, Mychajliw held a press conference to announce his final report, which was issued to the Erie County Legislature. During the press conference, Mychajliw accuses the Poloncarz administration of abusing the overtime system.
"The bulk of the overtime that was billed to COVID for M/C employees and union employees were the Office of Erie County Sheriff and the Office of Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz," said Mychajliw. "Our final analysis...is that the Poloncarz administration abused federal funds to allow highly paid political appointees to boost overtime and publicly pad their pensions."
As an example, the comptroller highlighted Michael Szukala, who was appointed as Medicaid Inspector General and is paid an annual salary of $120,047. Szukala has also collected an additional $4,032.29 in overtime pay for answering phones at the COVID operation center. For the sake of clarity, Szukala's salary is paid by New York State, but his overtime wages were paid through the county's federal CARES Act funds.
Mychajliw argues that the county could have utilized lower paid county employees to work the coronavirus phone banks, but the Poloncarz administration gave those jobs to higher paid administrators, whose overtime costs come at a higher rate.
"So many blue collar folks are out of work. Businesses are forced to close. Families can’t pay their bills," said Mychajliw. "Yet the Poloncarz administration took advantage of a crisis by allowing political appointees to pad their paychecks and their pensions."
In response to Mychajliw's report and press conference, Poloncarz was livid, saying the comptroller completely misrepresented the case of Michael Szukala, and that he lied to the public as well as the press.
"He lied - Michael Szukala is a union employee; Michael Szukala has a salary, which is his salary, but he just doesn't get paid that - if he doesn't work the hours, he doesn't get paid it," Poloncarz began. "The only salaried employees in Erie County are the elected officials - we get paid the same amount regardless of how many hours we work, whether we work 700 hours a week or seven.
"Mr. Szukala offered to assist in any way possible, and rather than sit at home and do nothing like a lot of the staff was, he became a contact tracer; he helped man the call center," the county executive continued. "He did it on Good Friday and Easter because we couldn't get people to man the call center on Good Friday and Easter, and he got overtime because we pay our union employees overtime when they work on a holiday...While Mr. Mychajliw campaigned (for Congress) in other counties on the people's dime, these people were working to protect the public and save lives - shame on Stefan."
Mychajliw's report also shows that AFSCME employees earned a total of $56,463 in overtime for 54 employees working a total of 2,100 overtime hours. 124 CSEA Correctional employees earned $86,462 for 1,864 overtime hours.