Being the the speaker of the City Council’s right hand man can pay off, literally.
Her chief of staff, Charles Meara, is the council’s top earner, according to payroll figures released today by the Manhattan Institute. His salary of $194,132 beats out the speaker’s compensation, which is $141,000. A councilmember’s base salary is $112,500, and the speaker gets an extra “lulu” worth $28,500.
The other top earners on the West Side of the City Hall are other influential department heads, including the council’s legislative counsel and the director of its land use division.
The top ten are in full after the jump
These figures were made available through the Empire Center for Public Policy’s relatively new database: SeeThroughNY. Resembling the attorney general’s Project Sunlight, SeeThroughNY allows you to also search contracts and state expenditures, in addition to public payrolls.
It released its city payroll figures this morning. The figures do not include overtime.