There is an art to using a public office to take taxpayers’ money and make it your own. Here in Western New York, no one has practiced that art with greater skill than Mr. Henry J. Wojtaszek. Now, just as new state anti-corruption reforms are finally catching up with him, he is aiming for one giant public payout more.
For the past eight years, Wojtaszek has occupied the post of president and CEO of Western Regional Off-Track Betting (WROTB). That is the taxpayer-owned gambling agency that operates a racetrack, casino, and hotel in Batavia, along with a network of off-track betting outposts across half the state.
By law, the profits from all of those operations are supposed to be handed back to the local governments that own the agency, including Niagara County. That money is then used to help pay for local services and to hold down our local taxes.
But for eight years, Wojtaszek has engineered one clever scheme after another to siphon off hundreds of thousands of dollars to benefit himself and those who have helped keep him in power.
Wojtaszek and his cronies on the agency board have given themselves tens of thousands of dollars in free Bills luxury box tickets. Board members have given themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal health plans. The executives there have engineered exorbitant salaries for themselves. They have doled out fortunes in contracts to their political friends. All of this comes right out of our pockets as taxpayers.
For years, Wojtaszek and WROTB have been the subject of legal investigations, state audits, and digging by investigative journalists, documenting the ways in which the public’s money has been diverted to benefit those in charge. Finally, last year, state lawmakers stepped in and passed a bill that changes the way the WROTB board is appointed, ending the power base upon which Mr. Wojtaszek built his empire of favors and payouts.
Mr. Wojtaszek is a clever man. He can see the writing on the wall. Last month he announced his plans to step down from his post. But before he goes he wants one more whopping payout at our expense — a giant severance deal worth $299,000.
By any measure imaginable, Mr. Wojtaszek and his wife, Caroline Wojtaszek, a Niagara County Judge are among the wealthiest people around. Last year Henry Wojtaszek engineered a sweetheart deal that boosted his public salary by more than 30%, to $276,000 a year. That’s more than what the governor of New York gets paid, more than the vice president of the United States. Not bad wages for running a casino full of video slot machines in Batavia.
On top of that, Judge Wojtaszek earns her own public salary of more than $200,000 a year. That means that, together, they make more than half a million dollars a year, all paid for by the taxpayers.
Most people would consider that wealthy beyond their imagination. But apparently, for the Wojtaszeks, a half million dollars a year is not enough. Now they want to add on top of that a whopping severance deal worth nearly $300,000 more, again, at taxpayer expense.
I try to imagine what the conversation must be like around the Wojtaszek kitchen table. If that $300,000 went to local communities, as it is supposed to, it could be used to hire mental health counselors to help our teenagers. It could be used to fix potholes, fund scholarships, or fix up our parks. The Wojtaszeks know this but they think they have a better use for those public funds — themselves. Do they have their hearts set on a pair of his and her Mercedes sports cars? Are they trying to buy a yacht? What do you do with a fortune like that?
This is how greed at the public’s expense works. Money that is supposed to be used to benefit our communities gets siphoned away by those who have made a career out of securing public power and think they are entitled to anything they can get their hands on, from free Bills tickets to giant severance deals.
The question is not what is right, but what you can get away with.
The other problem with Mr. Wojtaszek’s big payout plan is that it may well be illegal. Five years ago, New York lawmakers approved legislation by Assemblywoman Monica Wallace of Lancaster, the “Severance Pay Limitation Act.” That law strictly limits all severance deals for public employees to a maximum of three month’s salary. Mr. Wojtaszek is trying to walk away with four times that amount.
Assemblywoman Wallace is formally calling on the New York Attorney General to launch an investigation, calling the plan, “blatantly illegal.”
Mr. Wojtaszek might pull off this last giant raid of the public’s money, or he might not. But regardless, the Wojtaszeks, both of them, can’t hide their brazen greed behind closed doors anymore. Too many people are watching now. They should be ashamed at such a blatant grab of the public’s money. If you see either of them around, tell them that.