CONTACT: Lise Bang-Jensen
                    (518) 434-3100

New Yorkers today can search the complete 2009 state government payroll on www.SeeThroughNY.net, the government transparency website.  The updated database includes names, titles, base pay rates and total pay received by the 298,247 people who worked in the state’s executive, legislative or judicial branches at any point last year.

The payroll shows:

• 900 state employees earned more than the Governor’s $179,000 salary (including overtime and other extra pay).
• The highest paid employees in the state government database worked at SUNY’s Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn and its Albany campus respectively -- Stephen Onesti, chairman of the neurosurgery department, and Alain Kaloyeros, vice president and chief administrative officer of the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.  Onesti took home $958,047 and Kaloyeros was paid a total of $734,353 in 2009.

 Not reflected in the data are costs of pensions, health insurance for employees and retirees, and other benefits.  For tables listing the 50 highest-paid employees in each branch of state government in 2009, plus separate lists for higher education, click here.

Users of SeeThroughNY, which is sponsored by the Empire Center for New York State Policy, can search or sort the database by name, agency, subagency, title and salary level.  Search results can be downloaded to an Excel spreadsheet or CSV (Comma Separated Values) file.

SeeThroughNY allows the public to examine government expenditures on the Internet.  It includes the wages of more than 1.5 million employees of New York State government, public authorities, cities, counties, villages, towns and school districts.  Also posted are teacher and school superintendent employment contracts for 733 school districts, state legislators’ office expenditures, pork barrel projects, and a benchmarking feature for comparing local government and school district spending.  The site was launched July 31, 2008. 

The Albany-based Empire Center is a project of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, one of the nation’s leading non-profit 501(c)3 think tanks. 

-30-