Employees of the village of Lake Placid had the highest average salary among the 41 villages in the North Country in 2008-09.
That’s just one of the findings in a report released Friday by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a think tank that has compiled a database of the names and salaries of 179,000 city, county, town and village employees across the state.
The Empire Center filed a Freedom of Information request with the Office of the Comptroller to obtain payroll data reported to the state retirement system from April 1, 2008 to March 31, 2009. The group has posted the information it received in a database of municipal worker names and salaries at www.SeeThroughNY.net.
Lise Bang-Jensen, senior policy analyst for the Empire Center, said the public has a right to know how much money is being spent by local government bodies.
“This is public information,” she said. “This information should appear on the Web site of every local government in the state so the public can better understand how government functions.”
Among villages, the study found Lake Placid workers were paid an average of $40,979, which ranked as the highest average salary among the 41 villages in the North Country, defined here as Essex, Franklin, Clinton, St. Lawrence, Jefferson and Lewis counties.
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