#MTA’s top overtime earner raked in nearly $300,000 last year

A Long Island Rail Road repairman scooped up $218,877 in overtime pay last year — making him the MTA’s top OT earner, according to new data.

In total, Junior D. Lambert made $298,520 — more than triple his $78,832 base pay, and up from the $240,701 he took home in 2018, data released Tuesday by the Empire Center fiscal-watchdog group shows.

Informed that he was the MTA’s reigning OT king, Lambert, an MTA employee since 1997, said he was merely doing his job.

“I just go to work, do the overtime, and that’s how it goes. They have a list of the overtime sheet, and it goes by seniority, and everybody gets called to work,” he told The Post.

“I just say yes more than the next guy that says no.”

But Lambert’s OT tab was $125,270 less than that of the previous year’s top earner, Chief Measurement Operator Thomas Caputo, who billed the agency for $344,147 of OT in 2018 on his way to an agency-high $461,646.

Transit officials vowed to crack down on overtime grifting following reports of Caputo’s improbable hours and other LIRR high rollers, who accounted for nine of the MTA’s 10 highest-paid employees in 2018.

Four LIRR foremen raked in as much as $146,800 in OT — 23 percent of their collective OT tab — for hours they were actually traveling to and from worksites, the MTA Inspector General said in October.

Among the OT cheats was Raymond Murphy, who investigators caught lounging at home when he was supposedly working overtime.

The IG’s report suggested the practice of billing travel time as OT was “widespread” — thanks to an unofficial “handshake” agreement between the LIRR and its labor unions.

But the Empire Center report found the agency — and the LIRR — reined in overtime spending in 2019 somewhat compared with the previous year’s figures.

Between 2017 and 2018, the MTA’s OT spiked by $420 million, or 16 percent, to nearly $1.4 billion. Last year, the MTA spent $1.24 billion on OT — eight percent less than in 2018, but still 46 percent more than in 2014, according to the Empire Center.

The LIRR and the New York City Transit Authority — which operates Big Apple buses and subways — account for the entirety of the reduced spending, as other MTA subdivisions saw OT spending rise from between one to eight percent.

Nevertheless, four of last year’s top five overtime earners were still LIRR employees.

Last year’s slight course correction elevated then-Transit President Andy Byford from No. 21 to No. 2 on the agency’s list of highest-paid employees overall, raking in a little over $360,000.