“This is not a contract — it’s a giveaway,”

A give away? No this is an abomination and should be illegal. Talk about misuse of taxpayers dollars. I have a suggestion. PRIVATIZE it! Can you imagine the money that would and could be saved if that was done? We pay more for water than people do in the desert southwest and we are surrounded by water. Corruption has taken control everywhere, self serving political hacks and legislators have allowed this kind of crap to go on while we all slept.

It’s time to get out the pitchforks and torches, it’s time to take back our government people.

Golden parachute awaits Water Authority’s director

Mendez stands to collect $151,599 in severance, more benefits if he quits

The Erie County Water Authority’s top director can someday collect a golden-parachute payment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars — just as his deputy did.

When Deputy Director Edward J. Kasprzak retired in 2007 after 11 years with the water network, he was given $230,000: a year’s salary of $135,783, plus the modern-day value of his unused sick time and vacation days.

The deal was met with public outrage when revealed by The Buffalo News on its Web site Friday and its printed editions Saturday. County Executive Chris Collins, for example, said he was appalled that the Water Authority’s three-member board would allow such terms and wondered if the authority has similar contracts with other executives.

It does.

Like Kasprzak, Executive Director Robert A. Mendez would collect a bundle if he chooses to leave — but not retire — in the final year of his contract, 2010. That’s the year he turns 53.

Mendez would receive a year’s severance — worth $151,599 in 2010 — plus the modern-day value of up to 165 unused sick days and his vacation time. If Mendez has banked the same amount of leave time as Kasprzak did, he would collect a total $256,727.

Mendez’s contract was first drawn up before he turned 50, and it does not give him severance if he chooses to retire, only if he chooses to leave or is fired without cause from the water system, which serves 550,000 people in Buffalo’s suburbs.

But Kasprzak’s contract didn’t initially afford him severance at retirement, either. Authority Chairman Frank E. Swiatek said the clause was added to an agreement signed in 2005, the year Kasprzak turned 57.

Swiatek said officials wanted to reward Kasprzak for doing an excellent job protecting the agency’s finances and because he had passed up a state-offered early-retirement incentive. So they agreed to give him an extra year of pay whenever he chose to leave, even if he began drawing his pension from the state retirement system.

If Mendez ever is fired, and an arbitrator deems his dismissal unjust, the authority will continue to pay him and provide his medical insurance essentially through the years of the contract. If he leaves voluntarily, the Water Authority continues his medical insurance for life, as it does for Kasprzak.

“We should be asking how many contracts like this are out there, and they should be dealt with right away,” Collins said Friday in commenting on the Kasprzak payout. “The people who thought this was a good thing to do, we just should ask the question: Why would they sell the ratepayer down the river?”

Former Commissioner George F. Hasiotis and County Legislator Kathy Konst, D-Lancaster, expressed similar sentiments.

“This is not a contract — it’s a giveaway,” Hasiotis said.

Konst on Monday gathered together a group of citizens to examine the legal complexities involved in folding the Water Authority into Erie County government, much like Buffalo’s water system operates under City Hall.

The group reviewed the 1949 state law that created the authority but didn’t come to a consensus on how to proceed, Konst said.

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