Port Authority cop makes more than the president
New York City NY June 1 2020
The top 10 earners at the Port Authority last year all work for its police department and raked in more than $300,000 each — thanks to six-figure overtime payments.
The agency’s highest-paid employee was Regina Womack, a PAPD sergeant who took home $423,467 — after pulling down $259,717 in OT on top of her base pay of $131,843, according to numbers released by the nonprofit Empire Center.
That’s more than the $400,000 annual salary of the president of the United States. And Womack’s overtime alone nearly equaled the yearly salary of Rick Cotton, the director of the massive bi-state agency, who was paid $275,000 in 2019.
Womack joined the department in 2000 and works at LaGuardia Airport. She did not return a call for comment.
The other top earners included Bernard Buckner, a 25-year police veteran and sergeant, who was paid a total $376,040, including $204,968 in OT. Lt. Nicholas Yum, with 27 years of service, pocketed $374,588, including $168,022 in overtime. Buckner said he had no comment. Yum could not be reached.
The Port Authority could not provide an accounting of how many extra hours the top-earning police officers worked.
The average pay among all Port Authority employees in 2019 was $114,391, the Empire Center found. And of 2,118 police department department employees, 124 were paid at least $100,000 in overtime, according to the center.
In total, the agency paid $30 million more in overtime in 2019 than the previous year, according to the Empire Center.
The Port Authority has attributed the increased OT bill to “the intense need for traffic management” during ongoing construction at LaGuardia Airport.
The agency has said it expects to lose $3 billion in the next two years because of the coronavirus pandemic and earlier this month it asked for a federal bailout. In addition to airport traffic being down 97 percent, it has lost revenue from PATH ridership and bridge and tunnel tolls.
The agency said it has made more than $200 million in immediate cuts and reductions.
“Dollar for dollar, the Port Authority probably has the fattest public payroll in the New York metro areas, which is really saying something,” said E.J. McMahon, research director at the Empire Center. “Before the PA gets a dime of federal bailout money, it should be required to eliminate all but the most essential planning and operational positions and impose an across-the-board pay freeze, effective immediately.”
The Port Authority did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
