20 January 2022: Cuomo Insider James Malatras Cashes In Golden Parachute

Cuomo crony Malatras bags $450K SUNY ‘leave,’ $186K tenured post after resignation

Jim Malatras, the embattled and abusive CEO of the State University of New York, officially resigned on 14 January 2021 according to his exit contract, but not before exploiting the golden parachute he was provided. The following excerpt from this report provides the financial details of the rewards he collected:

James Malatras, the pressured-to-resign State University chancellor, is being paid $450,000 for his recently started year-long “study leave” — and next year he’ll get a six-figure tenured SUNY faculty position, his approved exit contract reveals.

The SUNY Board of Trustees officially greenlit Malatras’ employment contract, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, three days ago, on Jan. 16 – meaning he’s already started his $450,000 paid leave.

Once the year is up, he’ll assume a tenured faculty position at SUNY Empire College – where he used to be president – and he’ll be paid a $186,660 annual salary.

Among other abuses, Malatras participated in the Cuomo administration's doctoring of a New York Department of Health report, which concealed the full extent of COVID deaths among nursing home residents during the period Andrew M. Cuomo's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect.

Editorial: SUNY’s failed leadership

The Albany Times Union's editors have a few things to say about James Malatras'

Somewhere on the itemized bill State University of New York students get should be a future line item that could well be called the “Jim Malatras Golden Parachute Fee.” Or the “SUNY Trustees Malfeasance Fee.”

That would at least be full disclosure from a board whose refusal to call out Mr. Malatras for his behavior seems likely to cost SUNY, and state taxpayers, millions in years to come.

Mr. Malatras, who stepped down as chancellor last Friday, announced in December he would resign after a series of embarrassing revelations — his role, while he was a SUNY college president, in a deceptive Health Department report on nursing home resident fatalities in the pandemic; his involvement in discussions about ways to discredit a woman who complained about a toxic work environment in Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office; and a recording of him berating a woman while he was president of SUNY’s Rockefeller Institute of Government. He finally quit, saying it had all become “a distraction.”

But that’s not the end of the story. Mr. Malatras — a former top aide to Mr. Cuomo hired in 2020 as chancellor by an obeisant SUNY board without a national search at the administration’s behest — signed a deal earlier this week providing him with $450,000 to take a paid year off, and a lifetime tenured professorship at Empire State College that pays $186,660 (his original contract called for $245,000)....

We’ve already called on board holdovers from the Cuomo years to resign, and this latest wrinkle in the saga only affirms our view. It was bad enough that the board’s support of Mr. Malatras sent a terrible message to students, faculty, and all New Yorkers about its values and misguided loyalties. It’s all the worse to be stuck with the bill for the board’s malfeasance.

SUNY's board represents the worst of political patronage. Replacement governor Kathy Hochul is not doing herself any favors by failing to fully clean out the Cuomo crew from all levels of New York's state government and institutions.