CONTACT: Lise Bang-Jensen

(518) 434-3100

Payroll records for 7,449 employees of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey have been posted on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency web site for taxpayers. The new data includes names, titles, locations, base pay rates and total pay received for those employees in 2009.

The Authority’s top earner was executive director Christopher Ward, who earned $304,494 in total pay. Ward was the only Port Authority employee to brake the $300,00 mark. Newly posted data also includes payroll information for:

• The 9 employees who earned more than $250,000;
• The 54 employees who earned more than $200,000;
• The 404 employees who earned more than $150,000; and
• The 2,634 employees who earned more than $100,000.

Total payroll spending in 2009 was $664.7 million, $15.1 million more than in 2008.

SeeThroughNY allows the public to examine government expenditures on the Internet. It includes the wages of more than 1.5 million employees of New York State government, public authorities, cities, counties, villages, towns and school districts. Also posted are teacher and school superintendent employment contracts for 733 school districts, state legislators’ office expenditures, pork barrel projects, and a benchmarking feature for comparing local government and school district spending. The site was launched July 31, 2008.

(A table listing the 55 highest-paid employees of the Port Authority is available here.)