The LIRR racked up $225 million in OT last year, according to the Empire Center — consuming nearly a third of the $740 million in fares Long Island commuters pay. Put another way, without this burden, the average commuter riding from Huntington to Penn Station every day could pay $253, not $363. Read More
Schenectady’s property tax rate is $48.20 per $1,000 of home value, according to the Benchmarking New York report produced by the Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank based in Albany. Read More
ALBANY — Orleans County communities have five of the top 10 highest tax rates for 2018, according to the Empire Center’s annual Benchmarking NY rankings, released this week. Read More
Despite a year fraught with delayed, canceled and stalled trains, as well as the seventh fare hike in less than a decade, a new study released by Empire Center found that MTA’s overtime rose by nearly 16 percent last year. Read More
The number of LIRR employees who made more than $250,000 increased by nearly 50 percent from 2017 to 2018, according to payroll data found on the Empire Center for Public Policy's transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. Read More
New Yorkers were shocked by the recent revelation by the Empire Center for Public Policy that Long Island Rail Road Chief Measurement Operator Thomas Caputo received more than $344,000 in overtime payments last year, bringing his total salary to more than $460,000. Equally alarming is that this outlandish number will become the basis upon which his pension payment is calculated, which is expected to exceed $162,000 a year. Read More
Wise moves. Following a recent Empire Center report, The Post has spotlighted outrageous MTA overtime abuse, particularly at the LIRR, where one worker pulled in nearly a half-million bucks in 2018, thanks to 3,864 OT hours. Logging 4,157 extra hours, another boosted his pay nearly sixfold. Read More
As The Post has documented over the past week, overtime spending surged by more than $100 million to $1.3 billion across the entire MTA last year — and went especially off-the-rails at the LIRR, where one worker claimed $344,147 in overtime, according to data from the Empire Center. Read More