A suspended Buffalo Fire Department clerk, who was paid $600,000 over seven years while on suspension, resigned from her city job effective Nov. 30.
Jill Repman has three days left that she will be paid for in the coming payroll, Demone Smith, special assistant to Buffalo Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams, told The Buffalo News.
Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown's administration will roll out new policies and procedures to track city employees on paid leave.
“Then she will be out of the system,” Smith said.
Reached by phone, Repman told The Buffalo News she had no comment other than, “I never did any of the accusations. I just decided I wanted to retire.”
Repman had been paid more than half a million dollars by the city since 2016, when she was accused of tampering with the Fire Department’s payroll in order to pad her own paychecks and was placed on administrative leave, according to a Sept. 14 story posted online by Investigative Post.
People are also reading…
Buffalo City Comptroller Barbara Miller-Williams said she intends to conduct an investigation, but not a full-blown audit, to determine how an employee on administrative leave for 7½ years managed to be paid nearly $600,000 without triggering a hearing or an investigation.
Repman, who was first hired by the city in 1994, remained on paid administrative leave for 7 1/2 years, while simultaneously receiving paychecks from a private sector job for six of those years, according to Investigative Post.
In response, Buffalo lawmakers requested a comprehensive audit from the city Comptroller’s Office of all city employees currently on paid administrative leave, with a specific focus on cases of extended leave.
The Common Council is expecting the report to be filed with the city clerk this week. Then it will be referred to the Council’s Civil Service Committee meeting on Dec. 19 for review and discussion.
“We can anticipate something to be public next Tuesday,” said Fillmore Common Council Member Mitchell P. Nowakowski, committee chairman.
“I think that there’s going to be a lot of things that are going to be gleaned moving forward,” he added. “From this investigation, I think that a lot of people really want to get to the bottom of the main case in the investigation and the findings. People want to see … how pervasive is this within city employment and that there aren’t trends where we have chronic people that are out on paid administrative leave collecting a taxpayer check and not working, which is egregious within itself and hopefully, at least from my point of view as Civil Service chair, is I want to start seeing these cases remediated.”