ALBANY (TNS) — Retired doctors, police officers, psychiatrists and government administrators around the state were paid hefty pensions this year, according to new data compiled by the nonpartisan Empire Center for Public Policy.

The think tank reported that 11,384 of the 480,393 pensioners in the state’s retirement system were eligible for annual pensions of more than $100,000 during the 2025 fiscal year, which ended on March 31. Membership in the state’s six-figure pension club has been on the uptick in the last decade: it increased by 10% since last year and almost quadrupled in size between 2012 and 2022.

This year, 97 New York retirees reached an even loftier tier, collecting pensions of $200,000 or more, up from 78 last year. About half of those high-earning pensioners were concentrated across three downstate employers. Twenty-one had retired from the Suffolk County Police Department, 17 retired from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and 11 retired from the Nassau Health Care Corporation.

For the second year in a row, Kara Bennorth received the largest pension in the state. A former communications executive at the Westchester Health Care Corporation, Bennorth was eligible to collect $503,128 — the first pension to exceed half a million dollars since the Empire Center began tracking this data in 2008. More than half of Bennorth’s pension came from an excess benefit plan. During her last full year of active employment, in 2022, the think tank found that Bennorth was paid $761,660.

The other four top pensioners also hailed from the health sector. Shashikant B. Lele of the Roswell Park Cancer Institute was eligible for $438,102; Richard J. Batista of the Nassau Health Care Corp. was eligible for $339,874; Paul E. Scott of the Nassau Health Care Corp. was eligible for $329,693, and Brian M. Murray of the Erie County Medical Center Corp. was eligible for a $327,322 pay day.

Although federal law caps defined-benefit pensions at $275,000 per year, that limit does not apply to pensioners who joined a retirement system before April 1, 1996.

Police officers and firefighters represent less than 10% of the most recent cohort of state pensioners, but they make up more than 50% of the new retirees eligible for six-figure pensions. The average pension for newly retired police officers and firefighters who served for at least 20 years is $98,011 — more than double the average pension for the rest of the new retirees, which was $46,796. Collectively, all of the state’s public sector pensioners were eligible to receive $15.6 billion.

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