Local government is a labor-intensive business, and employee compensation is the single biggest element of most municipal budgets. The 2022 edition of What They Make, the Empire Center’s annual report on public payrolls, allows New York taxpayers to compare this key element of local government costs around the state.

The information in this report—broken down by region and by type of government—is based on data submitted annually to the New York State and Local Retirement System (NYSLRS) by local governments outside New York City.^[i] Job titles are generally not included in the data submitted to NYSLRS.

The latest county and municipal payroll database includes 2021-22 state fiscal year payroll information for full-time and part-time workers actively enrolled in the pension system as of August 2022. The figures used to compute the averages include regular pay, overtime and pay for unused sick and vacation time. However, the figures do not include employer pension contributions, health insurance and other fringe benefits—elements of total compensation that can add 35 percent or more to personnel costs. Highlights include:

• New York’s highest-paid local government employee was Daniel Hyman, the Police Chief for the Town of Ramapo, who was paid $453,171 in 2021-22, a 40 percent hike from the prior year.
• The highest paid general employee was Gerald Cayer, CEO of Lewis County Health System, who was paid $396,142 in 2020-21.
• Of the 50 top-paid general employees, 33 are from Long Island, including 25 from Suffolk County.
• The city of Yonkers, in Westchester County, paid employees an average of $113,299, the highest among cities. Next highest were New Rochelle and Rye, cities in the same region that each doled out pay averaging just over $100,000.
• Like last year, the top-paying local government was the Village of Oyster Bay Cove. Serving an affluent community on Long Island’s North Shore, the 13 police officers who constitute the village’s entire workforce were paid an average of $234,259.

Fifty Highest Paid Employees – Statewide

Individual public employee pay records for each year starting in 2008-09 can be found at the Empire Center’s transparency website, SeeThroughNY.net. The site includes a searchable database of 180,820 individuals paid a total of $10.68 billion by 1,993 local governments outside New York City during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2022.^[iii]

Who’s Missing?

What They Make uses pay data reported to NYSLRS. However, if a public employer is not making payments on an individual’s behalf, no data are reported. This can happen for several reasons:

• An employee is already collecting a pension from the system.
• Many community college employees belong to SUNY’s Optional Retirement Plan, a 401(k)-style plan, instead of the state’s defined-benefit pension plan. The counties that employ them make no payments to the state pension system on their behalf.
• Thanks to the 2012 state pension reform, some non-union employees are eligible for the state’s 401(k)-style Voluntary Defined Contribution (VDC) retirement plan. Like the SUNY Optional Retirement Plan, the VDC plan takes the long-term responsibility of funding retirements off the shoulders of taxpayers. In Rochester alone, 11 employees joined during the first two years it was offered.^[iv]

Double-dipping?

While employee home addresses and other personal identifying information are appropriately treated as confidential, the pension system does provide original hire dates for each individual on a local payroll. An analysis of 2020-21 data found 5,532 individuals who were paid by two or more local government employers in New York.

In most cases, the pay amounts reported for individuals listed under multiple employers suggest the person changed jobs during the year or had multiple part-time jobs. Eighty-Two individuals, however, had five or more employers during the year, with two individuals having as many as 11 employers throughout the year. Several of them worked as code enforcement officers, assessors, or emergency medical personnel for multiple local governments.

Most individuals working for multiple local governments were part-timers, such as attorneys and assessors, whose combined salaries were well below $100,000. However, 61 employees collected pay over $200,000 by working for two local government employers, up from 53 the previous year. Thirty-four of the 61 were Suffolk County employees.

In some cases, however, the same person held high-paying jobs with at least two local governments. The highest-paid individual paid concurrently by multiple local governments during 2021-22 was Charles M. Lohmann, who earned a combined total of $336,730 as a Detective Sergeant for the Suffolk County District Attorney ($289,228) and as police chief for the village of Head of the Harbor ($47,501). Captain Lohmann was also the highest-paid individual paid concurrently by multiple local governments during 2020-21.

Regional Employment and Pay Summaries