Nassau County Comptroller Howard Weitzman recently said that he is gratified that state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli has removed a sanitation district One attorney from the state pension system and rescinded pension credits from a treasurer in the same district after an investigation revealed that they were improperly reported as employees by the districts.

These abuses and inappropriate classification of professional consultants were revealed by Weitzman in a 2005 audit of the Town of Hempstead's Sanitary District One. Weitzman reported these questionable practices to the then-state Comptroller Alan Hevesi.

The county's 2005 audit was cut short, however, when the sanitation district officials refused to cooperate with the auditors.

"The exploitation of Nassau County taxpayers and of the state pension system by special districts and the professional consultants who work for them is coming to a screeching halt," said Weitzman. "We are anxiously awaiting the completion of the state comptroller's investigation of Albert D'Agostino whose similar actions have cost taxpayers hundreds of thousand of dollars."

Last month Comptroller Weitzman asked that New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli's office repay Nassau County taxpayers $102,246 that was inappropriately charged in 2000 to pay for over 21 years' worth of retroactive pension credit for A. D'Agostino, who did not work for the county as an employee.

D'Agostino worked under contract as a county consultant for the Planning Commission, but in 2000 he had his status converted to "full-time employee" so that he could receive over two decades worth of pension credit retroactively, costing the county $102,246. In the past week, dozens of other instances have come to light involving independent contractors employed by school districts, who were given "full-time employee" status in order to receive generous pension benefits to which they were not entitled.