Tech rakes in 180G as state OT champ

A state technology worker more than tripled her salary last year by running up $179,930 in overtime, records show.

Deborah Casais walked off with total earnings of $247,757 working for the Office of Information Technology Services despite a base salary of $67,827.

That made the Albany-area woman the state overtime champ for 2016.

Casais did not respond to a message left at her home.

Her co-worker Peter Walton made $135,109.18 in overtime on top of the same $67,827 base salary, the records show.

A woman who answered the phone at his home in Latham, an Albany suburb, said he was not there. She refused to take a message and hung up.

Walton’s overtime take, however, was just the fourth highest in the state, with two mental-health center workers ranking second and third among top OT earners.

Denise Williams, a treatment assistant at the Kirby Psychiatric Center on Wards Island off Manhattan, pulled in $167,122.13 in OT, on top of her base salary of $71,072.

Williams was the leading overtime earner in 2015, having taken in $171,994 that year.

Robert Henry, a treatment assistant at the Mid-Hudson Forensic Psychiatric Center in New Hampton, Orange County, earned $140,133.87 in overtime, with the same base pay as Williams.

Williams and Henry could not be reached for comment.

Floress Fingal, a nurse at the Bronx Psychiatric Center, rounded out the top five with $134,372 in overtime, in addition to his base salary of $51,830.

“I don’t have anything to say,” Fingal said when reached in The Bronx on Monday.

In all, the state paid out $694,182,053 in overtime in 2016, down 3.1 percent from the record $716.1 million in 2015.

That year, the Cuomo administration had argued that it was more economical to use overtime than to hire extra workers, considering the substantial cost of health insurance, pensions and other fringe benefits.

But overtime earnings are pensionable, as state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli routinely points out.

Among state agencies, the Department of Corrections spent by far the most overtime at nearly $205 million.

The Office for People with Developmental Disabilities took second place with its workers hauling in nearly $104 million.

The Office of Mental Health came in third, paying $109 million in overtime.

The three agencies all manage institutional settings and have also led OT lists in previous years, accounting for more than 60 percent of all the overtime spent by state agencies.

Others in the top five were the State University of New York and the State Police, which spent about $70 million and nearly $48 million respectively.

CUNY didn’t fair so poorly either, with its staff taking home nearly $15 million in 2016.