[What you need to know to start the day: Get New York Today in your inbox.]

The claim was stunning: A single worker on the Long Island Rail Road earned $344,000 in overtime last year.

Yes, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority confirmed, the worker managed to log 3,864 hours of overtime, part of a trend in which dozens of transit workers received millions of dollars for working extra hours.

High overtime costs have been a longstanding problem at the authority, but the latest figures have sparked an angry standoff between Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and the transit workers union.

Mr. Cuomo accused workers of fraud and called for an investigation. The transit union’s leader, John Samuelsen, likened the governor to President Trump and argued that overtime was necessary to fix the failing system.