Two numbers released by the Census Bureau in the past month say almost everything there is to say about New York’s relationship to the rest of the world: It is that shining city on the hill. Read More
Category: Media Coverage
The Empire Center, a government watchdog group in Albany, calls it the “biggest, murkiest, pork-barrel slush fund Albany (and perhaps any state capital) has ever seen.” The allocation is slipped into the state budget without any explanation from legislative leaders and the governor. Read More
As prices of Long Island Rail Road fares go up, so do the yearly paychecks of its employees. The number of LIRR employees who made more than $200,000 increased by about 40 percent from 2016 t0 2017, according to payroll data found on the Empire Center for Public Policy's transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
As pay packages for Port Authority cops continue to soar, the case for scrapping the PAPD grows stronger by the day. As the Empire Center reported Tuesday, the insanity brought the average pay for the PA’s 8,169 employees to nearly six figures — $99,654 — in 2017, up 1.7 percent over 2016’s astronomical levels. Read More
A squad of LIRR foremen are among the MTA’s top earners — raking in nearly $300,000 a year in overtime alone while the sweaty masses suffer through service hell. The time-sheet stuffers helped bring the agency’s overtime bill to a jaw-dropping $1.2 billion in 2017 — a 20-percent increase over the previous year, according to watchdog group The Empire Center. Read More
If every non-member stopped paying agency fees to the unions, they’d save a total of $110 million, said the Empire Center's Ken Girardin, and this would force unions to be more responsive to their members, rather than “treating them like cash machines.” Read More
Overtime costs soared at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority last year to a record $1.2 billion, a 20 percent rise over 2016, according to the Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY project. Read More
Education pays–especially if you’re a top administrator, medical staffer or football coach at New York’s public colleges and affiliated hospitals. Read More