Man paid for doing nothing - how tax money is spent

ALBANY -- As he tells it, Randall Hinton is paid $93,803 a year to do nothing.

He spends much of his workday at the State Insurance Fund donning headphones, listening to rock 'n' roll, blues or classical tunes and his superiors are cool with that.

His work agenda involves placing his feet up on his desk, staring out his office window and counting cars on the New York State Thruway. He arrives at 7:30 a.m., leaves at 3:30 p.m., sees no one and talks to no one.

He never does any work. It's been this way for Hinton for most of this decade...

Since February 2002, Hinton has been director of investigations for the Insurance Fund, but he said he has never been allowed to investigate anything. Instead, he builds up pension credits, year after year, but is unproductive at work because his superiors are blackballing him, he and his former boss say...

Initially, Hinton was assigned to supervise a few customer service representatives taking injury reports. Hinton complained the task was not a duty for the director of investigations. The unit he ran was later regrouped under customer service and Hinton was given just one duty — approving one person's time sheet every two weeks, he and his former manager said.

"He has nothing to do and has had nothing to do for the last two and a half years and what he had to do before that was relatively insignificant," said Obertubbesing. "It's an unfortunate situation." He said when Hinton arrived from DEC: "I was told a guy is coming to your office, fit him in, but he can't do this and can't do that. It was pretty apparent from Day 1 that they didn't want him to do anything."

He said he has essentially done very little work since about 1999 but has a competitive civil service position so that he is protected should layoffs occur and cannot be fired without due process, unlike the political appointees occupying posts he seeks.

"I don't know how I could get through the day without my iPod," Hinton said.

(More details and explanation at the link)