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Nice perk if you can get it: At least 100 board members receive insurance

BY SANDRA PEDDIE AND MICHAEL ROTHFELD | Newsday Staff Writer

April 9, 2007

Katuria D'Amato, wife of former Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, gets free family health insurance as a member of the part-time Hempstead Zoning Board of Appeals.

Patrick E. Byrne Jr., an anti-tax activist from Lake Grove, gets his benefits as vice chairman of the board of Suffolk Off-Track Betting Corp.

And Kings Point Mayor Michael Kalnick, a partner in his own Manhattan law firm, gets his health benefits fully funded by serving as chairman of the board of the Water Authority of Great Neck North.

All across Long Island, at least 100 members of various appointed boards are given health insurance - usually at no cost to them - even though they work just part time, in some cases only a few hours a month. Many also are eligible for lifetime health insurance once they turn 55 and are considered vested - sometimes after serving only a five-year term.

Offering fully paid health benefits to part-time board members is a little-known practice average taxpayers and even some government officials aren't aware of. Less apparent is that in some cases these part-time political appointees receive benefits for the rest of their lives.

Chief Deputy Suffolk County Executive Paul Sabatino said he was stunned to hear that part-time board members receive health benefits. "The existence and magnitude of this stealth tax in the form of lifetime benefits to all these boards takes my breath away," he said. "It makes me wonder what else is out there that we don't know about."

Oyster Bay homeowner Frank Manzella, already frustrated with his high tax bill, had never heard of the practice. "So they're screwing the taxpayers," said Manzella, 73, a retired comptroller for small companies. "When I was working, I had to pay for part of mine, and I was working full time."

Nassau Comptroller Howard Weitzman estimated the long-term cost of paying health insurance to just one board member who retires at 55 to be about $500,000. Although the current cost of supplying family benefits to an individual is about $15,000 a year, the price escalates over time.

"What's sneaky about this is that the true cost of this is not the few thousands of dollars you pay this year, it's the hundreds of thousands you're committing yourself to," said E.J. McMahon, director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, a conservative think tank in Albany.

New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo ruled in February that some state public authorities could not legally offer paid health coverage to their board members.

By contrast, the health insurance some local governments voluntarily give members of their boards is a legal - and costly - perk that has received little scrutiny.

Lifetime perk for some

Consider the example of John Trapani, a lawyer who took a part- time job on Nassau's Board of Assessors in 1982. A Republican, he attended about two meetings a month and earned a salary that reached $60,000 a year. The county also gave Trapani, now 91 and living in Ohio, health insurance for the rest of his life.

Today, more than 14 years after he retired, Nassau still is paying 100 percent of his $735-a-month premiums. His son said he suffers from Alzheimer's and could not comment.

Proponents of offering benefits to board members argue that it's the only way to ensure good candidates will take the jobs. "They want to attract people who are better-quality people," said Stephen Mahler, a practicing lawyer who gets benefits - and a $20,000 annual salary - through Nassau's Assessment Review Commission, which meets once a month.

But in many places on Long Island, board members serve without benefits or pay.

"We're just asking people to serve their community, and many people are willing to do so without having remuneration, and we thank them," Edwin Eaton, the city manager of Long Beach, said of the city's "very part-time" members of the architectural review, fire, zoning and other boards.

A Newsday survey of the larger government boards found that the towns of Brookhaven, Huntington, Islip, Southampton, Hempstead and Oyster Bay offer health insurance to members of various appointed boards. The seven other towns do not. On the county level, Nassau gives benefits to members of its Board of Assessors, Assessment Review and Civil Service Commissions, for example, but not to the county Planning Commission or the Industrial Development Agency. The Suffolk County Water Authority and Off-Track Betting Corp. offer board members benefits, as well. The survey did not encompass the hundreds of smaller authorities and special districts on Long Island.

Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said that although the county generally does not pay benefits to appointed board members, the question should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. "You can't paint them all with one brush. They're all very, very different," he said.

Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi declined to be interviewed on the issue. His aides said the county is "required" by a 1959 resolution to give part-time board members benefits. The resolution they cited said the county would cover its "officers and employees" in the state health insurance plan.