The top OT earners at the Thruway Authority


He writes:




But the overtime figures don’t exactly suggest that the Thruway Authority is pinching pennies. In fact, they probably help explain why the authority so desperately needs the $85 million it would raise from a toll hike.

Here’s a spreadsheet of the Authority’s 2011 payroll records, showing the top OT earners:
  1. Eyes Wide Open says:

    Looks like they could cut expenses by bringing on some people.

  2. Lathamguy says:

    Why all the overtime? Simple answer………they don’t have enough employees to cover the shifts!! Yes, a reduced workforce looks good to the taxpayers, DOB, and the governor, but does not change the reality. Other state agencies cover their staff shortfalls with contractors, consultants, and temps. The bottom line is the NYS workforce is being grossly mismanaged and the remaining employees are being demonized by the politicos, and the media is lapping it up.

  3. steve says:

    Jimmy, i find that your conclusion is at best premature. They may be pinching pennies. I can’t say whether an analysis has been done concluding that paying overtime is cheaper than paying for the advertising for, interviewing and hiring additional employees and paying their salaries, benefits and pension costs.

    If not one should be conducted. My point, i guess is that someone has to do the work. Is it cheaper to pay OT or hire a newbie? I dunno. But if it is cheaper to pay OT, then they are indeed pinching pennies.

    I’ll leave it to them to determine the most efficient way to meet the necessary workload at the Thruway Authority. If there are better way to do it, and it hasn’t been explored, that is when I’ll get frustrated.

    Until that analysis is done and made and publicized, i wonder how you can make the assumptions that you do.

    Ah, you need to sell papers, gotcha.

  4. Joe says:

    Gee, how much talent does it take to hand out the tickets? Seems a machine could do that task – like the do EVERYWHERE else. My Lord, talk about not even trying to cut costs….

  5. anneM says:

    Thank you Steve. I had the same questions after reading the article. Where is the analysis of the payroll costs vs staffing / OT? Not in the TU article. The employee is not accused of any wrong doing, so why is his salary news? The TU article would have been much more informative if they had dug deeper.

  6. Common Sense says:

    4,542 workers on the payroll for about a 450 mile road.

    About 10 workers per mile.

    No wonder the tolls are so high.

  7. Dale Gribble says:

    Machines do hand out tickets!
    But who accepts the money?
    What about when it is not exact change?
    That is what the toll takers do!

    The reason the OT is so high is because they have tried to cut cost and remained understaffed. This means someone has to be there to cover shift and work OT!

    This is what you get when you reduce the workforce!

    Some people are never happy!

  8. Chester Snodgrass says:

    Using overtime instead of increasing staffing levels is sometimes a money saver. Hiring additional staff means funding additional vacation time, sick leave, and health insurance for each new staff member. Overtime does not earn an employee andy additional benefits in these areas.
    I guess it all comes down to their hourly rates, versus the costs of these benefits.

  9. G says:

    Another non story from the T.U. No analysis, just a spreadsheet. The only articles in this paper ever written that are worth reading are done by Jim Odato. Everything else is crap.

  10. What About says:

    I could care less about the toll collectors and maintenance workers collecting overtime. Why are the Managers and Engineers allowed to collect overtime?

  11. What About says:

    Construction Mgmt in ALB has paid way more than enough in OT to Civil Engineer I’s to make the hiring of another Civil Engineer cost effective. Same goes for the Toll Plaza Managers in BUF Williamsville.

  12. ShowMeTheMoney says:

    Overtime figures ALWAYS make nice newspaper headlines. That’s why you see them so often. These are easy stories to write and print.

    The Thruway Authorities overtime figures don’t prove or even suggest anything about how frugal or wasteful it is, however. If Mr. Churchill presented some evidence that toll collectors are sitting in their booths unneeded and doing no work, he would have made a strong case that the overtime hours were wasteful. But he didn’t do that. As long as the hours were needed, someone had to be paid for them. The Thruway Authority might be able to save money by hiring additional staff and paying them straight time instead of the time and a half overtime rate. Or, it might not since there are other costs beyond salary associated with permanent hires. The issue can be analyzed financially, but Mr. Churchill didn’t do that. He just assumed that, if there were significant overtime expenses at the Thruway Authority, they must amount to waste pushing up his toll payments.

    On the other hand, Mr. Churchill’s observation that pay and benefits at the Thruway Authority generally exceed those of state employees working in “regular” state departments is much more relevant to the question of whether or not its personnel spending is too high. Based on the spreadsheet above, it also appears that the Thruway Authority is paying overtime to titles generally not permitted to receive overtime pay in regular state departments. A significant number of Civil Engineer 2′s seem to be getting overtime pay, for example.

    Generally, once you reach grade 23 in a regular state department, any work up put in beyond the minimum 37.5 hours (40 hours in institutions) is uncompensated. And, yes, there are plenty of state employees who routinely put in uncompensated overtime of five to ten hours a week. Thruway Authority employees seem to be getting paid for these extra hours, however. Depending upon the specific circumstances involved, this compensation might be quite legitimate. But it would worth asking the Thruway Authority to explain it.

  13. Safford says:

    Overtime headlines are a cheap date. Chester and ShowMe are correct in that overtime can be much more cost effective in a 24/7 operation than hiring more FTEs, and then funding their vacation, medical and retirement in perpetuity. I think that they do their best to manage it, and should be compared to other toll agencies, not DOT.

  14. Upstater says:

    Some info:
    Tropical Storm wipes out canal and sections of Thruway- you gotta pay someone to reopen. This explains a lot of the monies shown here. No mention of this in article. Large projects in Albany and the Tappan Zee Bridge – $$ to do these projects also. Expecting free?
    But that doesn’t explain all – lack of hiring, on-going cost cutting to dangerous levels, yes read past articles about Thruway reducing operating costs and the political hiring (TU-Jimmy-need to really look at this!!!) has resulted in this.
    Yes tickets can be dispensed electronically and collected this way but it takes now higher paid technicians to maintain vs. toll collectors.
    Finally-folks it does cost money to keep road open – continued cutting will reduce the Thruway service to the level of DOT. Next time snow on the ground see when driving Northway then onto Thruway. I still can drive down from Saratoga county without seeing a plow on the Northway. Why is that? To save a few bucks. This is why bridges are falling apart, potholes galore but we may sure and spend money on social programs.
    Which is why the toll raises. Maintaining a canal which loses money and the State using the Thruway borrowing capability to launder money to state programs (the Shadow Government you keep hearing about).
    TU- try some real reporting and/or go back to journalist school to understand this comment.

  15. Chester Snodgrass says:

    Once again State employee personal information has been published without cause. Folks considering government jobs should realize that they become second class citizens without rights to privay when they become civil servants.

  16. L says:

    The thruway doesn’t operate like a normal business. If someone doesn’t show up for a shift, someone has to see – which means overtime.

    It’s unfortunate that there’s no mention what so ever that there’s a good portion of employees on the thruway that are part time and these part timers do not get ANY health benefits. Would be nice to see a story about that somewhere…

RSS feed for comments on this post.