Column by Mark Scheer — New York’s taxpayers owe a debt of gratitude to the Empire Center for Public Policy.

The Empire Center is the group that does all of the heavy lifting that it takes to make various public payrolls and contracts and expenditures available to regular citizens online.

The latest information from the Empire Center comes in the form of the 2010 state government payroll.

If you are a struggling New Yorker and want to find out where a good deal of your tax money went last year, visit the website at seethroughny.net.

The database includes names, titles, base pay rates and total pay for 273,983 public employees working in the state’s executive, legislative and judicial branches.

You know this already, but I’ll sum it up for you anyway: Lots of people earning public salaries receive big bucks in New York state.

The highest paid state government employee in 2010 was a guy named Kevin Broadus. He’s the former men’s basketball coach at the State University of New York at Binghamton. He earned $1.02 million under a settlement with the university last year.

Next on the list came the chairman of the neurosurgery department at SUNY’s Downstate Medical Center Stephen Onesti. He pulled down $974,605. His colleague, vice president and chief administrative officer for the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, brought in $763,289. According to the Empire Center, payroll files from the SUNY Research Fund show Kaloyeros earned an extra $83,881 for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2010.

The highest average earnings among executive branch agencies, including SUNY and the state’s community college system, was the New York State Police where the average salary was $100,552.

Nearly 1,000 state employees earned more than the governor’s $179,000 salary, 96 more than in 2009.

When you consider Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s self-imposed $175,000 salary, 1,119 state employees earned more than the state’s chief executive last year.

A quick scan of the top 50 list of state earners didn’t reveal any names from Niagara County. There were a few from Buffalo, but the majority lived downstate.

There’s some comfort in that, I suppose.

The salary information coincides with another recent release by the Empire Center, one that pertained to spending by state lawmakers themselves last year.

According to the organization, the state Legislature spent $114 million during the six-month period ending in September. The SeeThroughNY website now offers four full years of legislative expenditures. Information can be sorted by reporting period, expenditure type and member name. Users can also isolate spending for individual units of the legislature’s central staff.

Richard Gottfeid, D-Manhatten, topped Assembly spending for the period at $431,683. On the Senate side, Pedro Espada, D-Bronx, spent the most at $1.2 million. Locally, Assemblyman Robin Schimminger, D-Kenmore, came in at No. 6 in Assembly spending at $322,287, and State Sen. George Maziarz, R-Newfane, ranked 28th in Senate spending for the time period with $407,527.

Again, thanks to the Empire Center for the information.

This isn’t exactly the kind of stuff state officials tend to brag about in campaign mailers or during press conferences.

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