2015VALLEY STREAMPAYROLLS

ABOUT

About

In 2015, the 97 Long Island villages paid more than $339 million to at least 8,834 full-time, part-time or seasonal workers. Here are the details on who they were and what they were paid, according to information supplied by the villages or by the state. The difference between base pay and total pay can be accounted for by many factors besides overtime, including shift differential, or payouts for unused vacation or sick time. Retiring workers may have received substantial payouts. Not all municipalities reported retirement or termination dates for all employees. Some villages could not provide a base pay for hourly workers. In some of those cases, an hourly pay rate is listed instead.

In some cases, a worker’s total pay may be less than the base pay because the worker did not work the whole year, taking an unpaid leave, for example. Some villages listed base pay on an annual basis, even for workers who did not work a full year. Some municipalities had names repeated. Unless the worker had the same exact title in the same department, those repetitions are listed here.

Some villages did not provide all the requested information. Where possible, we have published those that were nearly complete, with the word “withheld” in columns in which information was not provided. A few villages, such as Valley Stream and Ocean Beach, did not supply pay data and in those cases we are presenting partial data that the state pension system collects on Civil Service employees. That data would not include part-time or seasonal employees. Notes appear with some villages detailing the kinds of information withheld and what Newsday did to compensate. Villages that did not supply pay data do not appear in the bar charts.

You can read more about the village payrolls in 2015.

Payroll information was gathered starting in January 2016 under the state’s Freedom of Information Law by Newsday staffers Sarah Armaghan, John Ashbury, Valerie Bauman, Denise Bonilla, John Callegari, Sid Cassese, Sophia Chang, Ann Choi, Christine Chung, Tara Conry-Berghorn, Caroline Curtin, Joe Diglio, Heather Doyle, Scott Eidler, Deon Hampton, Lauren Harrison, Tim Healy, Whitney Lee, Dorothy Levin, Carl MacGowan, Laura Mann, Deborah Morris, David Olson, Ted Phillips and Judy Weinberg. Kathy Diamond assisted with data compilation.

NOTE: “Total pay” can include a variety of other categories (shift differential, unused vacation or sick time, etc.). A termination date would indicate there may have been a retirement payout as well.
This village for two years has refused repeated requests for payroll information made under the state’s Freedom of Information Law. We obtained from the state pension system a list of 302 Civil Service employees in the village for the 2015-2016 fiscal year and the total compensation each of those employees received. This state material does not include title, department, base pay, overtime, starting or termination dates or a designation of whether each employees is full-time, part-time or seasonal. The hire date listed is the day they became eligible for the pension system. It omits part-time workers and seasonal employees, which in some villages make up half the workforce. Newsday is pursuing this information through the courts. Because of all these differences, this list is not comparable to the payrolls of other villages and the village does not appear in the bar charts.