Suffolk County Community College accused in lawsuit of not raising administrators' pay

Four former and current Suffolk County Community College administrators have filed a lawsuit alleging the school did not pay them raises they were promised between 2015 and 2022.

The lawsuit was filed March 28 in federal court in the Eastern District of New York on behalf of Michael J. Grant campus dean Donna Ciampa, former executive director of the Suffolk Community College Foundation Sylvia Diaz, former Ammerman campus dean P. Wesley Lundburg and former deputy general counsel Alicia O’Connor. The lawsuit names SCCC, its board of trustees and its president, Edward Bonahue, as defendants.

The lawsuit does not say how much the plaintiffs are seeking. Their attorney, Paul Millus, said they are owed hundreds of thousands of dollars.

"It's about employers keeping their promise to employees, because they depend on those promises," Millus said. "They bank on them." 

The college, under its plan governing the salaries of exempt employees, was obligated to give the plaintiffs annual raises in line with the average increase in the Consumer Price Index, not to exceed 4%, according to the lawsuit. The administrators were not part of a bargaining unit, and those raises were in line with the ones awarded to members of the faculty union, the lawsuit said.

Former SCCC president Shaun McKay gave a directive not to adjust the 2014-15 salary schedule to reflect a pay increase, and Bonahue did not make adjustments when he began in 2021, the lawsuit said.

College representatives declined to comment, citing ongoing litigation. 

The plaintiffs’ salaries are not included in the lawsuit, but in 2022, O’Connor earned $188,170, Ciampa earned $208,506 and Diaz earned $189,520, according to payroll records obtained by Newsday through a Freedom of Information request. Lundburg, who resigned in 2020, had a salary of $176,502 that year.

The salary loss affected not only their earnings, but their pension contributions and the amount paid out for unused vacation time when they left, according to the lawsuit.

Ciampa is the only plaintiff still employed by the college. Diaz is now a Suffolk County deputy county executive for health, human services and education. Lundburg is president of San Diego Miramar College.

O’Connor, who has since taken a job at Fashion Institute of Technology, filed a similar complaint in March 2023 under the college’s whistleblower policy. The issue impacted 44 employees, the complaint said.

Bonahue told county legislators last year he hoped to use money from the school’s 2022-23 budget to settle the complaint but did not say how much it could cost. Millus said the offer made to his clients was "not satisfactory."

By Vera Chinese

vera.chinese@newsday.com@VeraChinese

Vera Chinese covers Suffolk County government and politics. She joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.