The number of retirees eligible for $200,000 or more in pensions from the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) reached 78 in the 2024 fiscal year, according to new data posted on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency website.
The list of NYSLRS retirees with the highest pensions is dominated by public hospital administrators and police officers. Seventeen retired from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and another fifteen retired from the Suffolk County Police Department.
The top maximum pension in 2023 went to Kara C. Bennorth Hubertus, a former Executive Vice President at the Westchester Health Care Corporation, who was eligible to collect an annual retirement benefit of $503,128—the highest reported by the system since the Empire Center started posting NYSLRS pension data at SeeThroughNY in 2008. In 2022, her last full year of active employment, Westchester Health Care paid Bennorth Hubertus a total of $761,660, according to SeeThroughNY.net’s salary database.
The next-highest pensions went to:
- Dr. Shashikant B. Lele, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, $437,778
- Richard J. Batista, Nassau Health Care Corp., $339,874
- Paul E. Scott, Nassau Health Care Corp., $329,369
- Brian M. Murray, Erie County Medical Center Corp., $327,322
Federal law caps defined benefit pensions at $275,000 a year, but the limit does not apply to individuals who joined a retirement system before April 1, 1996.
Among the 13,234 state pension system members who were newly retired after at least 20 years of service in 2023, 1,359 were enrolled in the Police and Fire Retirement System (PFRS) and were eligible for an average maximum pensions of $94,558, reflecting New York’s generally high police pay levels swollen by overtime. New retirees from the state’s Employees Retirement System (ERS) qualified for average pensions of $44,101. Six out of the ten new retirees receiving six-figure pensions were from PFRS.
The updated NYSLRS pension data set at SeeThroughNY.net includes names and allowable pension amounts for 472,922 retirees from state agencies, public authorities and local governments as well as non-teaching school district positions. The amounts, which are exempt from state income tax, show what retirees were eligible to collect during the plan’s 2024 fiscal year, which ended March 31.
The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, not-for-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies that can make New York a better place to live, work and raise a family.
You may also like
Empire Center Poll: New Yorkers Prioritize Low Energy Prices and Have Little Appetite for Radical Climate Policies
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
ALBANY, N.Y. — New Yorkers across political, geographic, age, and income groups oppose energy and climate policies that raise energy prices or force changes on homeowners, according to new Empire Center analysis Read More
New York’s Electricity Prices Fourth Highest in the Country
New York households are paying the fourth-highest electricity prices in the country, according to the Empire Center's In April 2026, residential electricity prices in New York averaged 29.45 cents per kilowatt-hour - 56 percent above the national average Read More
Fourteen NYC Educators Receive Over Half a Million Dollars in Pensions
Fourteen retired New York City educators received more than $500,000 in pension benefits in 2025, according to , the Empire Center’s government transparency website.
The data was obtained from the New York City Teachers’ Retirement Read More
Hammond Submits CDPAP Testimony to Congress
The Empire Center's Bill Hammond today submitted written testimony for a congressional hearing on healthcare fraud.
Hammond's testimony to the focuses on evidence of overuse and wa Read More
34 MTA Workers Made $200K+ In Overtime In 2025
Thirty-four employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) received more than $200,000 in overtime payments in 2025, as total annual pay surpassed half a million dollars for some, according to , the Empire Center’s governm Read More
A Bullying Lawyer Trapped an Innocent Woman in a Five-Year Court Battle – but New York Law can’t Make her Whole
We like to associate the law with justice—protecting the innocent and punishing the wrongdoers. But sometimes our laws punish the innocent and protect the wrongdoers instead.
Dutchess County mom Vika Shock learned this the hard way.
In November 20 Read More
New York at the Crossroads. WILL IT MODERNIZE LIABILITY LAW OR EXPAND IT?
Executive Summary
New York’s Litigation Environment
In a wide range of areas, New York law subjects residents and businesses to greater liability than other states. Consider, for example, that:
Unlike most other states, New York a Read More
New York’s Electricity Prices 70 Percent Above the National Average
Recent data from the Energy Information Administration and Empire Center for Public Policy show New York’s average residential electricity prices at 29.99 cents per kilowatt hour. This is 70 percent higher than the U.S. average of 17.6 cents per kilowat Read More