43% more Long Island town, city employees earning over $200G, Newsday analysis shows

Editor's Note: To see the full database of Long Island-based town and city employee payrolls, click here.

A total of 140 employees in Long Island’s towns and cities made more than $200,000 in 2023, a 12.9% spike over 2022, and 42.9% more than five years ago, a Newsday analysis found.

In 2023, Long Island's 13 towns and two cities paid 19,776 employees a total of $844 million, up 3.8% from 2022, when payroll totaled $812.7 million, Newsday found. The number of $200,000 earners increased from 124 in 2022 to 140 in 2023. Employees in municipal police and fire departments accounted for most of the increase.

In 2023, three town and city employees earned more than $400,000 — the first time since 2020 that an employee’s total compensation had reached that level.

Newsday analyzed public payroll data from the towns and cities using data obtained through the state's Freedom of Information Law.

Across Long Island, total overtime in 2023 was up slightly from 2022, the analysis shows, with seven employees making six figures in overtime alone: In Long Beach, five members of the city's fire department recorded the highest overtime payments on Long Island, with totals ranging from $118,934.07 to $217,546.52, the data show.

The increases, municipal experts said, came during a period of low unemployment, high inflation, and after governments recorded millions of dollars in federal pandemic aid.

Municipal experts cited several factors behind the rising number of $200,000-per-year earners on Long Island, where public employee salaries continue to rank among the highest in the state. Municipal officials said they are bound by the terms of contracts that were negotiated during collective bargaining, including stipulations for unused sick and vacation time that are based on contract terms agreed to decades ago. On the East End, town police departments account for the lion's share of the payroll totals and employ some of the highest municipal earners on Long Island, the data show.

“We routinely see some of the biggest local government paychecks on Long Island,” said Ken Girardin, research director at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a conservative-leaning Albany think tank. “We sometimes see individual police forces where the average pay is over $200,000 a year, and this is all a policy choice.”

Brookhaven Supervisor Dan Panico said the towns are generally unable to rein in payroll costs and are bound by the terms of employee contracts, where costs rise annually.

“A lot of those costs are fixed for a variety of reasons,” Panico said. “You have collective bargains. You have to live up to the terms of the collective bargains. 

“In general, government does not make money. Government provides services. And while you try to run government like a business, there are distinctions that are always going to be there.”

Total payroll trends

Some of the highest year-to-year increases were on the East End, where officials say it's become more difficult to hire and retain highly skilled professionals. Officials cited the challenge of commuting to the East End towns and a lack of affordable housing in the region.

David Schleicher, a Yale Law School professor and expert in state and local finance, said with any government service, taxpayers can evaluate two questions: “Is this good value for money? And are we getting what we’re paying for?” he said.

The 3.9% increase across Long Island's towns and cities was slightly below the average for private workers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, total compensation in the New York City metropolitan area for private industry workers climbed 4.2% for the 12-month period ending in December 2023. That figure was on par with the national average of 4.1% during that period, according to the bureau's statistics.

Schleicher said in a tight labor market, it’s “not surprising” that wages rose for public employees. As a result of low unemployment, “there is pressure on wages,” he said. Unemployment in New York was 4% in September 2022 — when towns proposed their 2023 budgets — as compared to the 10.2% rate two years earlier in 2020, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Pay in East Hampton Town rose 6.4% in 2023, from $31.3 million in 2022 to $33.3 million in 2023, the data show.

During budget hearings in October 2022, then-Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said his "primary focus" was to boost wages to fill vacancies and retain employees. He cited high inflation and the rising cost of housing and transportation.

The area's post-pandemic population growth put a strain on town services, officials said. And, to keep pace with the growth of the town's senior population, East Hampton established Programs for the Aging, a division within its department of Human Services.

East Hampton also added 11 new positions in 2023, mostly in the police department, town officials said.

In 2023, the town awarded 10% raises to department heads and appointed employees. That year, civil service employees received a $3,000 bump in base pay along with annual increases of either 1.5% or 2.5%. Members of the town's Police Benevolent Association and Superior Officers Association received 2% raises.

On Shelter Island, total payroll increased 12.3%, from about $6.3 million in 2022 to $7 million in 2023, Newsday found. Many of the town's highest-paid department leaders live off-island, Supervisor Amber Brach-Williams said.

Those positions are nonunion and require town officials to negotiate salaries on an individual basis during the hiring process, she said.

Adding new employees at a higher salary, she said, “reverberates through the rest of the organization."

"Then we just brought in someone brand new, and we’re paying them more than someone who’s been in other staff positions longer,” she said.

During a budget presentation in 2022, then-Supervisor Gerard Siller said the town needed to boost salaries "in order to remain competitive and to retain town employees and deter them from looking for better compensation and employment elsewhere."

Riverhead, Southold and North Hempstead all saw year-to-year increases of more than 6% from 2022 to 2023. Islip had the smallest year-to-year increase of 0.9%.

Martin Cantor, a former Suffolk County economic development director, said town officials have an incentive to hold the line on salaries. 

“Local government is the closest to the people. Budgets are scrutinized by the people and taxes become a pressure point,” said Cantor, director of the Long Island Center for Socioeconomic Policy, a Melville think tank. Officials “are pretty much respectful of the people who pay the bill, and that’s the taxpayers.”

Overtime

In 2023, the towns and cities paid about $44.3 million in overtime, a slight uptick from 2022, when the municipalities spent $44.1 million in total.

Six towns spent more in overtime in 2023 compared with the prior year, with spikes ranging from 3.7% in Shelter Island to 21.9% in Huntington.

Huntington Supervisor Ed Smyth said overtime costs increased in the highway department 63% in 2023 as workers prepared town roads for storms. In the IT department, OT costs spiked 76% as the town implemented a self-service portal for residents to apply for building permits and avail themselves of other town resources.

Oyster Bay's overtime spending increased 18.1% from 2022 to 2023. Hempstead's fell by the largest percentage — 30.7% — from $3.9 million to $2.7 million.

Long Island’s top five overtime earners all were in Long Beach’s fire department and included three lieutenants, a captain and a firefighter, payroll records show.

Their overtime pay ranged from $118,934.07 to $217,546.52.

The city paid more overtime than usual in 2023 because of staffing shortages, Long Beach City Manager Dan Creighton and Assistant Corporation Counsel Steven Pambianchi said. The city has since added six firefighters, boosting staffing levels from 17 to 23, Creighton said.

“We don’t expect to see this ever again,” Creighton said.

Average earnings

The average earnings across Long Island towns and cities ranged from as low as $30,602 in Babylon to as high as $63,519 in Southold for 2023. The data includes part-time and seasonal employees.

Across all towns and cities, the average total compensation increased 1.7%, from $41,956.90 in 2022 to $42,677.45 in 2023.

The highest-paid employees were clustered on the East End, where Riverhead, Southold, Shelter Island, East Hampton and Southampton all operate police departments. 

In 2023, the five eastern Suffolk towns and the two cities paid employees in their police departments $83.7 million, a 3.9% increase from the year before.

Southampton Town’s police department is the largest on the East End.

“Recruitment and retention right now is more difficult than I’ve seen in a lot of my career,” Erik Breitwieser, president of the Southampton Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, said.

In Southampton, a total of 60 officers in the Southampton Police Benevolent Association earned more than $100,000 in 2023 and three made more than $200,000, according to the payroll data. The two highest overtime earners received more than $50,000 in overtime in 2023, records show.

Recruiting is also difficult in East Hampton, said Joseph Izzo, president of East Hampton’s PBA. The new agreement includes increases of 4% in 2024 and 2025 and 2% in 2026. Izzo said the new pay structure will promote retention at a time when hiring on the East End “has become exceptionally difficult.”

In September, Babylon Town entered into a new contract with its union employees, represented by the Civil Service Employees Association, that hikes pay by 2% to 3%. Employees will contribute more toward their health care coverage. The union also agreed to a reduction of workers through attrition from 118 to 100.

“All of the employees recognize that our town is a middle-class, blue-collar town and that we’ve tried to keep the salaries commensurate with the residents who pay the taxes,” Babylon Supervisor Richard Schaffer said. "We’ve also spent a lot of time making sure that we can do more for our residents, while keeping costs in check."

Thad Calabrese, a professor at NYU's Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, said with union contracts in effect, municipalities have limited ways of lowering payroll costs. But “in the long run they have more tools than they think,” he said.

Improving efficiencies in some areas can reduce head counts over time, Calabrese said. But he acknowledged that can be more difficult in a town where a police budget accounts for a large portion of the payroll.

Southold Supervisor Al Krupski, who took office in January, said his town has struggled to retain employees.

“In a small town, you need a very specific skill set to do specific jobs, and so it’s not always easy to find people that are qualified,” he said.

More $400G earners

In 2023, the three highest earners on Long Island included two Long Beach police lieutenants and Hempstead Town’s former commissioner of sanitation, John Conroy.

Long Beach police Lt. William Dodge led the list with a total pay of $440,298.92, followed by Long Beach police Lt. Richard DePalma, with $414,469.26. Conroy collected a total of $401,376 when he resigned in January 2023, including more than $200,000 in pretax payouts for unused vacation and sick time, town spokesman Brian Devine said. The next two highest earners were Long Beach police Lt. Stefan Chernaski, whose total pay in 2023 was $396,955.75, and Long Beach Fire Lt. Medic Samuel Pinto, who made $365,720.61 in 2023.

Pinto also led Long Island in overtime earnings last year, making $217,546.52, Long Beach payroll records show.

Dodge, DePalma and Chernaski all boosted their compensation  with advanced retirement pay, Long Beach city officials said.

Last year, Long Beach officials struck a deal with its Commanding Officers Association to reduce the expense of retirement payouts in the city, which had exceeded $1 million in recent years.

Under the new contract provision, those workers accept all of their unused vacation and sick pay over a six-year period before they retire, Creighton said. "This front loads the retirement pay,” Pambianchi said.

Creighton called the arrangement “a very special circumstance.”

“We had to clean up the contract so the city was not at risk,” Creighton said.

DePalma, 49, who was a lieutenant in 2023 and became acting police commissioner at the start of this year, said the provision will help yield the city significant returns.

Of his 2023 salary, he said: "Although it does look like a lot of money, [the contract] is saving the city a lot of money in the long run.”

“When I retire, there’ll be no retirement payment for time on the books,” he said. “When the six-year period ends, it’ll just be my salary.”

Dodge, Conroy and Pinto could not be reached for comment. Chernaski declined to comment.

Schleicher, the Yale professor who specializes in state and local finance, said a $400,000 public sector employee is unusual.

“There are public officials who make that much," he said. "But they’re pretty rare.” 

With Denise Bonilla, Brianne Ledda, Deborah S. Morris, Joseph Ostapiuk, Ted Phillips, Jean-Paul Salamanca, Tara Smith, Anastasia Valeeva and Darwin Yanes