Caroga Town Supervisor Ralph Palcovic at a meeting on Feb. 14.

Palcovic

Caroga Supervisor Ralph Palcovic concedes he and the town board misunderstood the law and gave Highway Superintendent Roy Stock a raise in the wrong manner. The question, he said Tuesday, was how to rectify the mistake.

The town board decided to let Roy Stock resign the post he’s filled since January, returning to his prior job as the deputy superintendent until he resumes the top post Jan. 1, which he won in an election last week.

However, Caroga resident Shannon Wager said Stock was overpaid for the time he served, and should repay the town $12,000, citing town documents she acquired from a Freedom of Information request.

“I understand mistakes and misunderstandings can happen,” Wager told Palcovic and the board during a town board meeting Wednesday night. “But you paid him a whole year’s salary and he worked only 280 days.”

Stock was named the highway superintendent in January, replacing former Superintendent Larry Voght, who was charged Dec. 5 with offering a false instrument for filing, a felony, and official misconduct, a misdemeanor, according to Fulton County Sheriff Richard Giardino. Voght was accused of assigning a town employee to do work at his home while on town time.

Stock was paid $50,623.32 through Sept. 21 and $63,465.12 through Nov. 3, town records show. The salary for the position is $51,500 in 2025. The position will pay $70,200 in 2026, according to the budget adopted Oct. 22.

That’s because town leaders agreed to pay him $67,000 for the year — that was the error, Palcovic said. Board members thought town law gave them the right to set an appointed employee’s salary.

The $51,500 salary was less than Stock would have made as a union-represented deputy superintendent.

However, a letter Town Clerk Linda Gilbert received Jan. 14 from New York State Association of Towns Chief Counsel Lori Mithen-Demasi reports the town would need to adopt a law changing the salary of an elected highway superintendent, even if it’s going to a replacement appointed to fill out the remainder of an elected superintendent’s term.

Attorney Christopher Langlois, of Girvin Ferlazzo of Albany, wrote Palcovic on May 7 that laws changing a salary normally include a “catch-up” payment to cover time doing the job at the lower pay rate. However, he added, “My understanding, though, is that the town has been paying the highway superintendent at the ‘new’ $67,000 amount since the beginning of the year.”

The change would still require adoption of a local law, subject to permissive referendum. He attached a draft of that proposed law in his email.

Instead, the board opted to pay Stock the $51,500 salary, then let him resign and revert to his deputy post to maintain a paycheck through the end of the year. It was a decision the board made in consultation with the town attorney and the Association of Towns.

“It was easier and less expensive,” Palcovic said.

That resignation came in October, and Stock was elected to the position Nov. 4 with 384 votes in complete, but unofficial results. Voters cast 114 write-in votes. Voters also rejected a proposition to make the position appointed, 68-359, keeping the position elected.

However, Wager, a bookkeeper, said Stock should have drawn only the salary for the 280 days he worked. That would be about $39,500, meaning Stock would need to repay the town almost $12,000.

Stock sat quietly through the exchange and the rest of the meeting, and declined comment.

But Wager isn’t done.

“If the taxpayers don’t get their money back, I’ll go to whoever I have to to get our money back,” she said after the meeting. “It’s common sense and it’s our money.

“I don’t have a problem with the salary they set. It should be paid at that amount, but do it right,” she added, noting the town has had at least six months to adopt a law raising the salary. “They had time to do it right and they didn’t.”

Dave Slade cuts golden rod in a field on Jackson Valley Road in the town of Perth on Tuesday.

Hard work, work

New York is ranked 30th in hospital patient safety, according to a new report released Thursday, which also found that some local hospitals are faring better than others.

The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit watchdog organization dedicated to patient advocacy, handed down the ranking in its biannual hospital safety report that assigns acute-care hospitals a letter grade — A, B, C, D, F — based on nearly two dozen metrics that range from doctor communication to infection rates using data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and voluntary self-reported surveys.

New York’s latest ranking sees the Empire State move up from the 31st spot Leapfrog gave the state in the spring. The state rankings are based on the percentage of hospitals that receive an “A” grade, which in New York’s case, is 23%, down 2 points from the spring.

The drop in “A” hospitals across the state corresponds with a trend seen nationally, allowing New York to move up.

Most hospitals in the Capital Region received a “C,” while two received a “B.” Saratoga Hospital received the only “A”, while Columbia Memorial Health in Hudson received the region’s lowest score of “D”.

While some hospitals praised the rankings, others urged more caution, noting that while well-intentioned, the grades rely on old data and do not paint the most accurate picture. “We defer to Leapfrog for any characterization of their data,” the state Health Department said, noting “Information about hospitals is always available on our website, 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Kathryn Burggraf Stewart, director of health care rankings for the Leapfrog Group, said the organization issues the only peer-reviewed report focused on patient safety. The grades, she said, are intended to keep patients informed and give them resources to ask questions.

“Preventable medical errors, accidents, injuries and infections in hospitals kill upwards of 200,000 people every year,” according to Leapfrog.

“One in four people admitted to a hospital suffers some form of avoidable harm,” she said.

“That’s a huge number, so it’s important for patients to be informed, understand their choices in hospitals, and certainly a safety grade is one resource,” Burggraf Stewart said.

A closer look

Leapfrog’s 22 metrics are divided into five categories, including infections, problems with surgery, safety problems, practices to prevent errors and doctors, nurses and hospital staff.

Some of the data points include post-surgery infections and complications and routine practices like handwashing and communication around medicines and discharge procedures.

“An ‘A’ safety grade is going to have more of those processes and structures in place that are going to prevent medical errors,” Burggraf Stewart said.

Some of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services data in the latest report — such as information pertaining to harmful events like blood clots, sepsis and accidental cuts and tears — includes information from July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2023.

Others, like those pertaining to objects left in a patient’s body, patient falls and injuries and bubbles in blood, are from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2024.

Burggraf Stewart noted that in even the highest-rated hospitals there’s room for improvement and that a low grade doesn’t guarantee a bad experience.

“No hospital is perfect,” she said. “Even an ‘A’ graded hospital is not perfect. ... But again, those hospitals that have ‘A’s, they do generally have systems that prevent errors, accidents and infections more so than say a ‘D’ or ‘F’ hospital.”

Ultimately, it comes down to having a conversation with your provider, said Janae Quackenbush, senior communications director for the Healthcare Association of New York State, a member organization that advocates for health care organizations across the state.

Quackenbush said the Leapfrog Group’s report “is one of many tools patients can reference” when seeking a hospital for a specific procedure or specialty.

“Patients should also consult with their doctors and other providers who know their personal clinical needs,” she said. “Patients can also ask their doctors or local hospital staff any questions they have about their hospital’s Leapfrog grade or quality improvement initiatives.”

Local grades

Saratoga Hospital was the only local hospital to receive an “A” this time around, continuing its top-grade........

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