Zimmer Ends Benefit Payments To Former Mayor

Mayor Dawn Zimmer recently informed the City Council that former Mayor Anthony Russo was taken off the city’s health care benefits. She said former mayor Russo was not entitled to the benefits he was receiving for the last years, including the time he spent in federal prison.

Zimmer estimated that the city paid Russo between $80,000 and $100,000 in health care benefits.

Third Ward Councilman Michael Russo, son of the former mayor, said that the mayor is "scoring political points" by publicly announcing this, implying that the "supposed audit" is a political move on the mayor's part.

“In 2008,” Michael Russo said in a statement to Patch, “I called for an audit to be conducted to determine how many former city employees were receiving health benefits without qualifying for them.”

During the council meeting of Dec. 3, 2008, Councilman Russo asked then-corporation counsel Steven Kleinmann about the payments, saying that there were more than 90 people receiving illegal benefits.

Former State Fiscal Monitor Judy Tripodi performed an audit of the health care benefits the city pays out and removed about six people. Former mayor Russo was not one of them.

Zimmer on the other hand, said that the timing of the announcement is a coincidence.

The audit looking into the matter, Zimmer said, was started by Business Administrator Arch Liston last Fall. Currently, the mayor added, Liston is performing of all employees’ health care benefits.

“As we find things, we’re working to address them,” Zimmer said.

Ultimately, every month's health care payments to current and former employees are approved by the business administrator.

This, Councilman Russo said left him, as well as the rest of the council, “to assume that anyone not removed from the list was receiving benefits properly.”

Former mayor Russo served from 1993 to 2001. In 2005 he was found guilty of accepting bribes and was sentenced to a 30-month sentence of corruption charges.