Police Lt. Nicholas Federico pulled in $466,775 last year from the Port Authority. His base salary was $180,691. The other $215,717 came from overtime.
He wasn't even the only one.
At least 20 Port Authority employees cleared $400,000 in total compensation last year, according to payroll data analyzed by the Empire Center for Public Policy and reported by ZeroHedge. Detective Sergeant Dewan Maharaj took home roughly $448,600, with about $148,000 in overtime. Detective Sergeant Robert Zafonte Jr. hit roughly the same mark, banking around $139,000 in overtime on top of his base.
And it's not just cops gaming the clock. Reginald Bowers, a Chief Maintenance Supervisor, racked up $231,916 in overtime alone, bringing his total compensation to $421,041. A maintenance supervisor. Making more than most surgeons, most lawyers, and certainly more than the guy sitting in the E-ZPass lane wondering why tolls just went up 3%.
The total Port Authority payroll last year hit $1.2 billion. Of that, $196 million — 16% of the entire payroll — was overtime. Police overtime alone accounted for $85 million. The average cop on the force made $184,949.
Some 323 employees earned over $100,000 in overtime alone. Not total pay — overtime. Of those, 189 were police officers and 8 exceeded $200,000 in overtime. Out of 8,356 total workers, 5,711 — 68% — received overtime pay of some kind.
Here's where it gets interesting. Former Port Authority Director Richard Cotton retired in January with total earnings of $327,918. That's the head of the entire agency. And 94 employees out-earned him. Sixty-eight of the top 100 earners work in the police department, which employs 1,968 officers to cover airports, bridges, tunnels, and the PATH rail system.
Zilvinas Silenas, President of the Empire Center for Public Policy, put it simply: "Taxpayers are getting fleeced twice."
He's right. The Port Authority pushed through a 3% toll increase in January, eliminated some off-peak E-ZPass discounts, and has PATH fare hikes on the way. You're paying more to cross a bridge so a lieutenant can double his salary with overtime that nobody seems to audit.
Port Authority spokesman Seth Stein offered the standard bureaucratic deflection: "Keeping the people we serve safe is non-negotiable and our highest priority." Which sounds great until you realize the agency is spending $196 million a year in overtime and can't explain why a maintenance supervisor needs to work enough extra hours to earn $231,000 on top of his base salary.
The overtime machine works like this: staff at levels that guarantee overtime, let the overtime flow, then point to the overtime as evidence you need more staff. It's a perpetual motion engine powered entirely by your tolls and tax dollars. Nobody in management has an incentive to fix it because the people approving the overtime are the same people benefiting from the system.
The agency protects airports, tunnels, and rail systems across the New York metropolitan area. Nobody's arguing those jobs aren't important. But importance doesn't explain why 20 people need to make $400,000 a year to do them, or why 68% of the workforce is pulling overtime while the agency simultaneously raises tolls on commuters.
A 3% toll hike. Eliminated discounts. Fare increases coming. And somewhere in the Lincoln Tunnel, a cop is working his way toward half a million dollars a year.
That's not a staffing problem. That's a business model.