The Empire Center, a nonprofit that breaks down payroll payments of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, also found that overtime spending for the LIRR increased $50 million, almost 30 percent, from 2017 to 2018. Read More
Category: Media Coverage
Caputo’s hefty payday came as the LIRR shelled out $224.6 million for overtime in 2018 — up nearly $50 million from the previous year’s $175.4 million, according to data released this week by the Empire Center. Read More
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s top earner last year raked in a budget-busting $344,147 in overtime — on top of his $117,499 salary, according to data released Tuesday by the Empire Center fiscal-watchdog group. Read More
Gelinas gave the terse assessment of the MTA’s payroll and the study by the Empire Center that shows some transit workers living higher off the hog than the Transit Authority own president, Andy Byford. Byford’s pay – to run the entire bus and subway operation – is $325,600. Read More
According to a report from the Empire Center, MTA costs increased by 16 percent last year, bringing payroll totals to some $418 million. That is $82 million more than the transit system expects to earn via the current year's round of fare, ticket and toll hikes, the report says. Read More
The weak population numbers for upstate continues a pattern that has played out for at least a decade, said E.J. McMahon, research director for the Empire Center for Public Policy, an Albany think tank. "The rural areas are the weakest," McMahon said. "The upstate decline is continuing. It's not much different from the picture we have been seeing and the same components are causing it: the combination of domestic migration losses in every county but two (Saratoga and Ontario), low foreign immigration and more births than deaths in a lot of rural counties. You put that all together and you have a population decline." Read More
E.J. McMahon, founder of the fiscally conservative Empire Center think tank, said Cuomo has conflated the impact on the rich New Yorkers with how the federal tax reforms affected middle-class New Yorkers. For the most part, New Yorkers saw a decrease in taxes because of the federal changes, he said. Read More
The Empire Center’s E.J. McMahon similarly noted he has worn his belt through airport security “about a hundred times without taking it off or tripping anything,” but is still required to take it off while entering the Capitol. “It’s easy for people who want this, which is mainly people in government, to dismiss this as just carping over an inconvenience for people who don’t want to wait in line,” he said. “But it sends a very important and ultimately demeaning message to the public.” Read More