Seven of the 10 highest-paid municipal employees in the eight-county Capital Region worked for Schenectady County, the Empire Center for Public Policy noted. While the individual salary numbers have been previously reported for the seven men — a child protective services caseworker, a doctor, a lawyer, three law enforcement officers and an economic developer — the report released Wednesday ranks them in comparison to the other counties outside New York City. Read More
Payroll data for 73,884 public authority employees, totaling almost $4.5 billion, have been added to SeeThroughNY. Read More
E.J. McMahon, research director of the Albany-based Empire Center for Public Policy, a fiscally conservative think tank, said contractual employee raises from collective bargaining agreements and civil service laws likely played a major role in rising costs. The agreements "produce steady increases over time, based mainly on seniority and oblivious to local economic or fiscal pressures," McMahon said. Read More
Overtime payments jumped nearly 16 percent last year at the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), fueling agency-wide average pay hikes of 6 percent, according to newly posted payroll records at SeeThroughNY.net. The increase in MTA payroll costs for 2018 alone was $418 million—$82 million more than the authority expects to raise annually from its latest round of fare, ticket and toll hikes. Read More
The complete 2018 New York State government payroll is now posted on SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center’s government transparency website. Read More
More than 120 employees of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) collected $300,000 or more during the city’s 2018 fiscal year, according to the latest payroll data added to SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website. The top 2017 paycheck at DEP was $216,112. Read More
The percentage of workers in local government earning more than $100,000 jumped 14 percent over the past five years, a review of state records showed. Read More
Once upon a time, anyone who wanted to know what local government employees were paid had to pick the right meeting to go to and hope the board didn’t go into executive session, or file a Freedom of Information Act request and wait. Enter the Empire Center for Public Policy. Read More