As a member of the state Senate, Buffalo Democrat Tim Kennedy championed legislation aimed at reforming the operations of Western Regional Off-Track Betting Corp.
Now a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congressman Tim Kennedy on Monday said he wasn’t familiar with the details of the lucrative buyout agreements reached last week with three of WROTB’s top executives, including outgoing President and CEO Henry Wojtaszek.
When asked what he thought of Wojtaszek’s deal — which will pay him a full year’s salary of $287,000 when he departs the position at the end of 2024, along with the salary he has already earned so far this year — Kennedy suggested it would be a matter for his old colleagues in Albany to decide.
“I imagine it’s something that the state legislature is going to look into and if there were any laws that were not followed then there needs to be accountability of the board that made the decision,” Kennedy said.
The Niagara Gazette and its news partner, Investigative Post in Buffalo, previously reported that WROTB’s Board of Directors agreed — a 14-1 vote — to approve a resolution authorizing contractual buyouts for Wojtaszek and two other top authority executives, including longtime chief financial officer Jacquelyne Leach and vice president of administration William White.
Under the terms of the agreement with Wojtaszek, the outgoing president and CEO will depart from the agency at the end of the year and will be paid an additional year’s salary of $287,000 as a buyout. Under their deals reached with the board, Leach will receive $117,000 as a buyout and continue to work through the end of February. White is set to leave in April and would receive a buyout of $84,000.
All three executives received raises in January, their second in a year after earning initial pay bumps in first-ever contracts last spring. Those contracts were set to run through 2026. Leach’s annual salary is $234,500; White’s is $167,500. Wojtaszek’s salary of $287,000 places him among the highest-paid public officials in New York. He earns more than Kennedy and Gov. Kathy Hochul as well as many other notable state and federal officials.
The buyouts will be paid for with OTB funds, which are considered public monies. Profits from OTB’s operation, which include a casino, hotel, betting parlors and harness racing track, are shared among the two cities and 15 counties that own the agency.
In January 2022, amid questions about WROTB’s operation raised by a pair of scathing audits from the New York state comptroller’s office, Kennedy introduced three pieces of legislation aimed at reforming the public authority’s operation. The biggest of those three bills changed the makeup of the agency’s board of directors, shifting it from a system where all 17 members had an equal vote to a weighted system where members representing municipalities with larger populations, like Buffalo and Erie County, held more sway over board decision-making. State lawmakers approved the reform measures as part of state budget deliberations in May. A group of rural counties, including Niagara County, later filed a lawsuit aimed at overturning the decision on the shift in board voting power.
In the wake of last Thursday’s vote by WROTB’s board, state Assemblywoman Monica Wallace, D-Lancaster, questioned whether the contractual buyouts are in keeping with the Severance Pay Limitation Act, which limits severance for at-will employees of New York public authorities to no more than 12 weeks’ pay. Wallace sponsored the act after members of the board at the Erie County Water Authority authorized what she decried as a “golden parachute” severance deal for a former director. State lawmakers approved her bill in 2018 and it was signed into law by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo a year later.
Last week, Wallace said the move by WROTB’s board violated the spirit of the act. She has asked New York State Attorney General Letitia James to review whether it violated the letter of the law as well.
“It seems like trying to pay him the money before he leaves, they are trying to get around it,” she said, referring to Wojtaszek’s buyout. “It’s very clear what they are doing is trying to give him a golden parachute.”
“Otherwise, why are they giving him this money, if it’s not a golden parachute?” She added.
Kennedy, who voted in favor of the Severance Pay Limitation Act while a member of the state legislature, suggested Monday that such a review may be appropriate in this case.
He also suggested the WROTB reforms he supported in Albany are still taking hold and that he believes they will eventually do as they were intended and that’s reform WROTB operations which he described as the “epitome of nonsense” and indicative of “unethical behavior.”
“The work that I did at the state level put in place the changes that is allowing these changes in leadership to occur,” Kennedy said. “I think it should have occurred a long time ago. That’s why we put in the legislation that we did. I think it’s time for an overhaul of the OTB in the western region.”