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Appellate Court Defers to Agency Interpretation of a Statute When Specialized Knowledge Required

The Third Department affirmed the State Budget Director’s determination that state employees normally not entitled to overtime pay are eligible for overtime pay if they worked more than 47.5 hours in a week as a result of Hurricane Sandy.  Petitioners sought overtime pay for those who worked more than 40 hours per week.  The Third Department explained when an appellate court must defer to the statutory interpretation made by a state agency (the court so deferred here):

Initially, we must determine whether the Budget Director’s interpretation of Civil Service Law § 134 (6) is entitled to deference. This Court will defer to the governmental agency responsible for the administration of a statute when interpretation of the language at issue requires the agency’s expertise in the matters covered by the statute, but will accord no such deference when “the question is one of pure statutory reading and analysis, dependent only on accurate apprehension of legislative intent” … . Although the Civil Service Law provides that the “workweek for basic annual salary” for employees who are eligible for overtime shall not exceed 40 hours (Civil Service Law § 134 [1]), overtime-ineligible employees are expressly excluded from the coverage of that section, and nothing else in the legislation defines the phrase “normal workweek” as used in Civil Service Law § 134 (6) for such employees or prescribes the number of hours contained in such a workweek. Under these circumstances, in our view, the number of hours in the “normal workweek” of an overtime-ineligible state employee necessarily implicates the Budget Director’s specialized knowledge of state employment practices and “involves knowledge and understanding of underlying operational practices or entails an evaluation of factual data and inferences to be drawn therefrom” … . Accordingly, this Court will defer to the Budget Director’s determination and uphold it if it is not irrational or unreasonable … . Matter of Kent v Cuomo, 2015 NY Slip Op 00680, 3rd Dept 1-29-15

 

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