Pay could exceed that of supervisor

By THOMAS J. DOLAN
News Northtowns Bureau
6/21/2003

Amherst's parks department - under investigation by police and frequently criticized for excessive overtime - took another blow this week.
James R. Binner was removed Thursday as head of the department by Highway Superintendent Robert Anderson. Binner reverts to his job as a general crew chief.

Anderson declined to comment Friday on the action, and Binner could not be reached.

However, one Town Board member publicly criticized Binner this week for collecting excessive overtime. For the past two years, he has led the rolls of town employees who reap large amounts of overtime pay.

"I heard that he makes more money than the chief of police and the supervisor. . . . You don't have to get greedy about it," Board Member Michael G. McGuire said.

This year, Binner has worked nearly 200 hours of overtime, adding $8,491 to his annual salary of $52,404, according to town records. If the trend continues, it will be the third year in a row that he tops $70,000 in total earnings - more than the town supervisor and many other town management personnel.

At the time, Binner described himself as a "workaholic" who's dealing with an ever-increasing workload in his department.

He said he stepped down from a $61,000 job as deputy highway superintendent more than two years ago in order to escape from the limelight, not to collect overtime.

Binner, who is vice chairman of the local Conservative Party, says there is nothing underhanded or political about the overtime he receives. Still, controversy has followed Binner since he joined the highway department six years ago. In January 1996, his boss, then Highway Superintendent Thomas J. Wik, passed over more senior employees and named the then 33-year-old Binner - who managed Wik's political campaign in 1995 - as the No. 2 man in the department.

Then, last year, the woman who broke through the "glass ceiling" at the Amherst Highway Department complained that Binner and Wik were subjecting her to gender harassment. Kathy Kaminski, the first and only female crew chief in Amherst town government, filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, charging that top highway officials forced her to move from her office, undermined her authority and even began harassing her son, a highway department truck driver.

More recently, Amherst police detectives seized purchasing and other records from the highway and parks departments as part of a three-month investigation, according to Chief John J. Moslow.

Moslow declined to discuss specifics of the investigation but said that police were "working as quickly as possible" to conclude their work and that he expected the outcome to be announced in the "not too far distant future."

Police are consulting with the Erie County district attorney's office, but they have not presented any evidence to a grand jury, he said.


e-mail: tdolan@buffnews.com


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