Eight employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) were paid more than $200,000 in overtime last year, part of a general surge in MTA overtime in 2016, according to data posted today on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s transparency website.

Seven of the employees worked for the Long Island Railroad (LIRR) as foremen and one worked as a machinist for Metro-North Railroad. The MTA’s 2016 overtime champion was LIRR track foreman Ralph K. Golden, who added $256,155 to his base pay of $104,822. That brought Golden’s total pay to $360,978, which was $14,271 more than the pay collected by outgoing MTA chairman and chief executive Thomas Prendergast. The list of the 50 highest-paid MTA employees can be viewed here.

The Authority’s total overtime spending in 2016 was $971 million, up 4 percent from $934 million in 2015. Among the 77,342 employees who drew a paycheck from the MTA in 2016, 177 received overtime pay of $100,000 or more. They included 112 employees of the LIRR—where the average overtime pay last year rose 10 percent. The overtime spending at each MTA unit is detailed below:

SeeThroughNY’s searchable databases now include up to ten years’ worth of payroll records for all state and local governments and public authorities in New York, along with lists of state and local public pension recipients and their benefits; details of pork barrel spending allocations by the state Legislature; teacher union and superintendent’s employment contracts for all school districts; office and operational spending by the state Legislature; “benchmarking” tools allowing users to search and compare local spending and tax levels; and an easy-to-use app for searching details of the state budget.

The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, nonpartisan, not-for-profit think tank dedicated to promoting policies to make New York a better place to live, work and do business.