Workers in five Westchester cities have the highest average municipal salaries among city employees in the state outside of New York City, a report released Thursday by the Empire Center for Public Policy found.
The report, which covered April 2012 to March 2013, also found county workers in the Lower Hudson Valley are among the best paid at that level of government. Westchester County employees earned the highest average salary at $80,322, followed by Putnam workers at $66,537. Rockland employees ranked fifth in the state at $61,764. Two Westchester correction officers were among the 10 highest-paid employees overall in the state, each raking in about $275,000 — more than double their base pay.
Employees in Ramapo, Harrison, Clarkstown, Orangetown and Bedford were paid the highest average salaries in the state among towns.
Statewide, local governments had a nearly 9 percent increase in full- and part-time employees in the past fiscal year but the average salary dropped, the report said.
Tim Hoefer, the group’s executive director, said the data showed how taxpayer money is being spent.
“As a taxpayer, I’m concerned about what is my tax base and where is that money going and what is it for,” he said.
The cities with the highest average salaries were Yonkers, at $68,786; New Rochelle, at $64,293; Peekskill, at $60,888; Rye, at $58,904; and White Plains, at $58,093.
Yonkers Mayor Mike Spano said the city has cut positions in recent years. He said the higher salaries result partly from the higher cost of living in the Hudson Valley compared with other parts of the state.
Also, he said the salaries show that laws need to be changed to limit the cost of employees on strained local governments.
“Every municipality, including obviously ours, in this state is facing the high cost of labor. We cannot afford it. We cannot sustain it,” Spano said.
Westchester County spokesman Ned McCormack said the state has refused to reform the Triborough Amendment, which lets union contracts continue after they expire. He said County Executive Rob Astorino has renegotiated five contracts that require health-care payments for some union workers, saving about $130 million a year.
“We have this structural problem with our labor force in New York,” McCormack said. “It doesn’t leave us a lot of options.”
The report ranked Yonkers as having the third-highest average salary for city police and firefighters in the state, at $116,914, followed by Peekskill at $115,055 and Rye at $107,380.
Among town cops and firefighters, Ramapo paid the highest average in the state, at $162,392, followed by Clarkstown at $161,102, Orangetown at $142,457 and Stony Point at $134,276.
Though the report said the average salary for county, city, town and village workers dropped last year, from $55,431 to $52,207, it also said the number of local government workers outside New York City earning more than $100,000 increased by nearly 5 percent to 17,224.
Highest paid was George Gatta Jr., a vice president at Suffolk County Community College who collected $359,632 before retiring in February.
Two Westchester County correction officers ranked fifth and sixth. Sgt. Eric Middleton, whose base pay is $102,760, made $277,339; Officer Stanford Brown was paid $276,562 — more than three times his base pay of $87,825. Sixteen of the state’s highest-paid local employees were police officers.
Stephen Madarasz, spokesman for the Civil Service Employees Association, the state’s largest public-sector union, said the average salary for its members is about $40,000 a year and they pay part of their health-care and retirement costs.
“You can always pick out extreme cases,” he said.
With reports from Richard Liebson, Jonathan Bandler and Jorge Fitz-Gibbon.
©2013 Journal News