Saturday, November 1, 2008

Tom White

PUBLIC $ERVICE PAYS TOP COUNCIL EARNER
By David Seifman, New York Post, October 21, 2007

THE top earner on the City Council pulled in more than $350,000 last year, with the help of pension checks from his previous stint on the council.

Recent reports on the outside income of council members have focused on the few lawyers who rang up low six-figure incomes in private practice to supplement base salaries of $112,500.

It looks like non-lawyer Tom White has them all beat.

The 68-year-old Queens legislator's financial disclosure form shows he added to his council salary with $5,000 to $35,000 from Social Security; another $5,000 to $35,000 from a pension earned when he served in the council between 1992-2001; and $5,000 to $35,000 from a property rental.

IRS filings indicate White, a Democrat, was also paid $215,930 in 2006 as executive director of J-Cap, a drug treatment program he founded decades ago in Laurelton.

And then there's the $10,000 he collects to chair the council's Economic Development Committee.

Since the disclosure forms delineate income only in broad categories, White's total take last year could have been as low as $353,430 or as high as $443,430.

Only one other council member was in the same league - Brooklyn's Lew Fidler, whose law practice generated $140,000 to $350,000.

The council is considered a part-time job and critics have long argued it should be made full-time. But some of the top earners, including Fidler and Staten Island's Mike McMahon, are also among the most productive legislators.

When he was first elected, White garnered unwanted publicity for being absent more often than any other legislator.

By most accounts, he's matured.

"He's much more serious," said one insider.

White was recruited to return in 2005 by the Queens Democratic organization, which was anxious to oust Alan Jennings, a maverick who became embroiled in a harassment scandal.

"You learn as you go along," he told The Post.

"I'm fortunate in that the district that I represent is also where my other job is. So it's not a matter of me having a job in Queens and then having to come to Manhattan or go to Brooklyn. It's right there."


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The city's Off-Track Betting Corp. has entered a $110 million liability on its books to account for the cost of future health benefits for its 1,500 employees.

For now, it's merely a paper entry made to meet accounting rules.

But the city won't be on the hook if OTB shuts down, a possibility raised for the first time last week by Mayor Bloomberg to spur Albany to change an onerous revenue-sharing formula.

"Of course we would like to do the right thing for all OTB employees, but we do not have any legal responsibility to cover OTB liabilities," said mayoral spokesman John Gallagher.

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