A Voice of Sanity in the NYS Senate

David Koon's bill A2930 (providing for a salary/benefits package cap on the chancellor of the state or city university of New York to $250,000 of public funds; and no state officer's salary shall equal or exceed the governor's) now has a matching bill in the NYS Senate.

S4842 is being sponsored by Senator Darrel Aubertine.

I can only imagine how outrageous and out of touch some of these SUNY salaries look to the constituents of Senator Aubertine's North Country district. Senator Aubertine's district covers Jefferson and Oswego Counties and parts of St. Lawrence County.

• Jefferson County has an average income per person of with $20,436. 15% of the population lives below poverty level.
  
• Oswego County has an average income per person of with $20,490. 16.5% of the population lives below poverty level.
• Oswego County has an average income per person of with $18,198. 16.4% of the population lives below poverty level. (factfinder.census.gov)

Looking at numbers like these always makes me wonder who SUNY thinks is going to be paying the bills?

By popular demand, I've updated my SUNY spreadsheet of highrollers, $200K and up (SeeThroughNY). In 2008, there were 353 people in SUNY earning over $200,000 a year, for a total of $89,122,752 in salaries alone. Governor Patterson makes $179,000 +- 10%.

Capping these salaries at at $175,000 would save the State $27,347,752.

And maybe as an explanation of how these outrageous salaries came to be in the first place, the Project Sunlight database shows that from 2007-2009 SUNY spent over $1 million lobbying the State. (There outta be a law against state agencies lobbying the State.)