Here's the top of a story filed this afternoon by Sandra Peddie and Eden Laikin:
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli has revoked four lawyers’ memberships in the state pension system and canceled service credits for a fifth after determining they were not public employees, a spokeswoman said.
The lawyers are all partners in Girvin & Ferlazzo, a prominent Albany law firm. Auditors found that all five had been reported as full-time employees of the Hamilton-Fulton-Montgomery BOCES, located west of Albany, when the five actually had worked a total of just 196 days in the 2006-2007 school year. One lawyer, auditors said, worked only four hours.
The five were paid a total of $234,000 for the year, auditors said.
“We determined that these lawyers were inappropriately classified as employees,” said DiNapoli’s spokeswoman, Emily DeSantis.