Elizabeth Ganga

eganga@lohud.com

Westchester County employees are the highest paid county employees in the state, both on the police side and in general government jobs. And among towns, Ramapo claims the top spot for its employees.

Westchester and Rockland governments are prominent throughout a new report by the Empire Center for Public Policy on county and municipal payrolls in New York. The report compares the different governments by category and within regions, allowing taxpayers to see how average salaries in their area stack up against their neighbors.

The Empire Center, a fiscally conservative think tank based in Albany, has been compiling payroll data for years as part of its effort to highlight government spending.

"Our top priority is to make information available to the general public so they can be better educated as to what's being done with their tax money," said Ken Girardin, communications manager for the center.

The report came days after The Journal News published a series of articles on salaries based on Freedom of Information requests from Putnam, Rockland and Westchester counties.

The Empire Center's report focuses on the raw numbers, without explaining the reasons behind the differences in pay or putting them in their regional context. Westchester, Putnam and Rockland have among the highest housing costs in the state and a much higher cost of living than upstate counties.

The average pay figures include overtime and payouts for unused sick and vacation time and are based on data reported to the state retirement system for the year ending March 31, 2014. In Westchester, general employees made an average of $76,652 and police made $184,865. Westchester's police salaries were unusually high last year because officers received five years of retroactive pay after a contract settlement.

Ned McCormack, a spokesman for Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino, said the administration has worked hard to keep employee compensation in check. The workforce has been reduced more than 14 percent, he said, cutting wages 6.5 percent since 2010.

Westchester's top paid employee last year, Police Officer Wayne Mullaney, who has since retired, was also the top paid employee in the mid-Hudson region, which includes Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester. But statewide, his $319,628 paycheck only put him at number three behind employees from Suffolk and Nassau.

Putnam and Rockland were also in the top five for average general county salaries, at $65,445 and $61,698 respectively.

Ramapo employees made an average of $72,264 while town police made $164,847. The town was followed in the list of highest average pay statewide by Clarkstown. Orangetown also made the top five towns statewide for both police and general employees while Mount Kisco had the fifth highest average police salaries, at $138,927.

Ramapo Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence said he thinks his employees are paid fairly. But he acknowledged that arbitration rules that compare Rockland forces to each other in setting contract terms have had an impact.

"That has somewhat ratcheted up the salaries in Rockland overall," he said. Ramapo was listed by the state Comptroller's Office last year as one of the most fiscally stressed governments in the state.

St. Lawrence said he has tried to control the town's labor costs by reducing the size of the labor force.

Among cities statewide, the top five average salaries for general employees were all in Westchester: Yonkers, New Rochelle, Peekskill, Rye and White Plains. Yonkers, Rye and Peekskill were also in the top five cities for police salaries.

Twitter: @eganga