June 10, 2007 -- The number of city workers making base salaries of at least $150,000 surged 50 percent last year. Office of Payroll Administration documents obtained by The Post showed:
* 626 employees reached the $150,000 pay level in 2006, up from 416 in 2005.
* The increase was led by the Department of Education, which saw its number of $150,000 earners more than double in 2006, to 229 from 97.
* Among these high-pay employees at DOE were new hires James Liebman, formerly a lawyer for the NAACP, who earned $188,304 as the head of DOE's accountability office, and Santiago Taveras, a longtime DOE employee who earned $155,174 working with Liebman on school reviews.
* The Mayor's Office saw the number of employees earning $150,000 rise to 24 from 17.
At least three of these employees were new hires:
* Veronica White, making $153,000, was tapped by Mayor Bloomberg to oversee many of the city's anti-poverty initiatives.
* Jennifer Jones Austin was hired at $157,080 to manage the city's Family Services programs.
* Analyst Rohit Aggarwala pulled down $153,000 to help with the mayor's PLANYC initiative.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein continued to be the city's best-paid employee, at $250,000 per year.
Also, the number of city workers who earn at least $100,000 is steadily rising, with 4,062 workers earning six figures in 2004; 5,113 in 2005; and 5,438 in 2006, a 6 percent uptick from the previous year.
The vast majority of the city's 300,000 employees working at 70 agencies earn far less. The average annual salary for a District Council 37 member - the union representing a third of the city workforce - is $35,000
City officials attributed swelling salaries to promotions, contractual raises for union employees and a recent bump in managerial pay from the Bloomberg administration.
At DOE - the city's biggest agency, with 140,000 employees - officials attributed the growth to a reclassification of former principals and superintendents who became local instructional supervisors at the slightly higher salary of $150,688.
The increase did not sit well with Leonie Haimson, director of the parent group Class Size Matters.
"We've heard about many restructurings, but after each one it seems the number of high-paid executives down at Tweed [school headquarters] has mushroomed," she said. "I haven't seen any money redirected into schools."
A DOE spokeswoman insisted that "DOE in 2006 cut $230 million from its administrative budget and redirected it toward the schools. We're getting an exceptional return on taxpayer dollars."
The percentage of New York City employees who make upwards of $150,000 is still small - less than two-tenths of a percent. That's a smaller percentage than Los Angeles, where 350 government workers out of 47,488 exceed $150,000, but larger than Chicago, where 40 out of 39,674 make at least $150,000.
Some observers were not alarmed at the city's swelling ranks of top-pay earners.
Doug Turetsky, chief of staff at the Independent Budget Office, said collective bargaining contributes to New York's steady salary growth.
"It's fairly common to periodically pass on the same rate of increases that union employees get to managerial titles," he said.
Andrew White, director of the New School's Center for New York City Affairs, said the city does better than the private sector when it comes to payroll disparities.
"The difference between wages of front-line service workers and top executives [in large private firms] is usually 1,000 percent or more," he said. "In a city government with about 250,000 full-time employees, fewer than 700 people are making more than six times the wages of clerks and cadets with the lowest pay. That's far more fair than in the private sector."
gotis.@nypost.com
