Though we looked up from the rabble to jeer at our seersuckered overlords last week, perhaps we should have averted our gaze downward into the subway. Today's Daily News profiles another infamous "pension padder" who made an extra $175,000 in overtime by cashing in sick and vacation days.
Though Dominick Masiello's base salary at the LIRR was $75,389, he made $250,401 last year thanks to "arcane union work rules." Though he was "among the MTA's top 10 best-compensated employees in 2010," Masiello plays it cool: "There's nothing to hide. I worked hard for that money…I put my life into it." Though the story says that Masiello lives in a "modest two-story brick home in Port Washington," we're pretty sure you can cram at least a few thousand tins of the finest sturgeon caviar in there.
Dennis Reardon, who like Masiello, retired at the end of 2010 and boosted his pension payments through all his overtime, took home an extra $167,000 in addition to his $75,389 base salary, said "I did 32 years of…lousy shifts—working weekends, working summers…I paid my dues." We're aware of only one career that doesn't have to "work summers," and we probably wouldn't trade places with them right now anyway.
While we won't go as far as to say that folks like Masiello "do nothing," we agree with the lawyer from the Straphangers Campaign, who says "It makes you wonder how efficient their management is if they're supervising employees who earn three times as much as their base salary." As the cost of MTA pensions balloons by 8 percent, and with the rest of us staring down the barrel of fare increases, maybe it's time we all made a career change?
