Report: L.I. police officers highest-paid local government employees in state

Long Island police officers dominated the list of highest-paid local government employees outside New York City in 2014, according to the Empire Center, which released its 2015 “What They Make” report yesterday. Thirty-one of the 50 highest-paid local government employees were police officers on Long Island, including 24 Nassau County police officers.

Suffolk County’s 2,387 police officers have the highest average salary of all Long Island cops at $154,474, according to the report. Nassau County cops earned an average of $149,645.

But the highest-paid town police officers were in Westchester and Rockland towns:

Ramapo $173,361
Clarkstown $166,719
North Castle $150,840
Orangetown $143,677
Haverstraw $135,357

The police officers’ average pay in the five East End towns:

Shelter Island $131,362
Southold $125,018
East Hampton $123,336
Riverhead $119,326
Southampton $114,657

Members of the Riverhead Police Department occupy most of the the top spots in the town’s payroll — see Riverhead Town payroll data here  — with 81 police officers earning more than $100,000 per year. (See police payroll data here.)

Riverhead Police Chief David Hegermiller topped the town’s payroll chart at $219,237.

General (non-police) employees are paid better at the county level than their counterparts in town government. Nassau County’s 7,059 employees earned an average of $65,837, while Suffolk’s  8,516 workers earned an average salary $64,106.

The report ranked the 13 towns of Long Island for non-police average salaries as follows:

Oyster Bay  $60,215
Huntington  $57,132
North Hempstead $56,926
Hempstead $54,788
Smithtown  $50,802
Southold  $48,062
Riverhead $46,537
Brookhaven  $46,248
Southampton  $45,282
East Hampton  $44,561
Babylon  $42,290
Shelter Island  $42,187
Islip  $40,934

The Village of Greenport ranked 42nd among the island’s 87 village governments with an average employee salary of $43,519.

Twelve non-police employees of Riverhead Town — consisting of the supervisor, nine department heads and two deputy town attorneys — earned more than $100,000, according to the data.

The “What they Make” report used pay data reported to the New York State and Local Retirement System between April 1, 2014 and March 31, 2015. The amounts listed in the report do not include fringe benefits such as health insurance or employer pension contributions, which can add 35 percent or more to the cost for taxpayers.

Users can search the 175,327 pay records of town, city, county and village employees on SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website.

The Empire Center is a non-partisan, non-profit independent think tank based in Albany. SeeThroughNY includes payroll and pension data for state and local government employees and retirees; detailed expenditure data for the state Legislature; comparative statistics on local government spending; a searchable database of state revenue and expenditures; and copies of all teacher union contracts and superintendent of schools contracts.