OT boosts county salaries
Five employees more than double their base pay
Five of Albany County’s 10 highest overtime earners were able to more than double their base salaries last year.
All 10 are employed in either the sheriff ’s department or nursing home and three of them were among the county’s highest paid employees.
The lead overtime earner was Marie Van Patten, a supervising nurse at Shaker Place Nursing Home, who added $86,241 in overtime to her $75,013 base salary. Longevity and other payments brought her to $164,286 in total.
Van Patten is a supervisor who often oversees all the nursing homes’ units, said Larry Slatky, Shaker Place’s executive director. Slatky is the county’s highest paid employee at $350,000 a year.
“We don’t mandate overtime at the nursing home, we go totally by a volunteer system,” he said. “Some people volunteer more than others.”
Other employees work as many overtime hours as Van Patten but she is among the nursing home’s highest paid employees, which means her overall salary is higher, he said.
The nursing home does have a policy that typically limits employees to three
overtime shifts in a week to prevent burnout but sometimes that policy is overridden if the residents’ care requires it, he added.
The next eight highest overtime earners include sheriff ’s deputies, correction officers, a 911 operator and a county EMT.
Robin Wolfe, a correction officer, was the leader there, with $67,600 in overtime on top of his $64,095 base salary. Longevity and other payments boosted his total to $140,658. Deputy Sgt. Joseph Iachetta earned $143,013 in total, thanks to $61,028 in overtime in addition to his $65,104 base salary and $16,882 in other payments.
Sheriff Craig Apple said the department’s overtime spiked across the board last year, in large part to the pandemic and cost of assisting the Albany Police Department with patrols over the summer. In the beginning, many of those shifts were overtime shifts, he said.
“It’s pretty simple, I’ve got 80 vacancies,” he said. “Our expenses by far outweigh what we thought they would.”
Apple said he has since scaled back the number of deputies patrolling the city of Albany with city police officers from 20 per shift to eight.
Nicola Mcmullen, a 911 operator, Jordan Barach, an EMT, and Winsome Wilson a licensed practical nurse, rounded out the five employees who worked enough overtime to more than double their base salaries.
The county’s remaining highest paid employees include District Attorney David Soares, at $204,500, Health Commissioner Elizabeth Whalen, at $183,557, Vanessa Denning, the nursing home’s medical director, at $159,502, Chief Assistant District Attorney David Rossi at $158,146, County Executive Dan Mccoy at $154,326 and Sheriff Apple at $141,957.