State Sen. Antoine M. Thompson’s office has resembled a hiring hall since Democrats took control of the Senate last year.

Back when Thompson and his fellow Democrats were in the minority, he employed two full-time staff members.

Today, he’s got 11, plus two others squirreled away elsewhere on the Senate payroll.

“That’s a big jump. He probably had too few staff when he had only two employees and too many when he has 13,” said Lise Bang-Jensen, senior policy analyst with Empire Center for New York State Policy, a fiscal watchdog organization.

Thompson’s payroll costs, which also include a bevy of part-timers, have soared as he’s added staff. His payroll averaged about $6,300 a week when Thompson and his fellow Democrats were in the minority and jumped to $15,362 a week for the pay period that ended July 7 of this year.

Thompson’s payroll is up not only because he has hired more people, but has handed out generous raises.

Mark Boyd, his chief of staff, is scheduled to earn $86,154 this year. In 2007, his salary was $55,000.

Lisa Yaeger, an attorney who works considerable hours, although not enough to qualify as a full-timer, has gone from making an average of about $830 a week to about $1,400 a week when she does work.

Thompson has gone from having the leanest to the costliest staff operation among the six state senators who represent Western New York, even taking away two full-time and two part-time hires whose costs he’s assigned to other Senate offices, The Buffalo News found.

His weekly staff salaries for employees assigned directly to him was $10,631 for the pay period ending July 7. That figure excludes the four staffers paid for elsewhere in the Senate budget.

Only Sen. George D. Maziarz, R-Newfane, came close to spending as much as Thompson, with a weekly payroll of $10,357.

At the other end of the spectrum, Sen. Michael H. Ranzenhofer, R-Williamsville, spent $5,467 on staff salaries.

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Weekly payrolls: What Western New York state senators spend on staff salaries

*For one-week pay period ending July 7, 2010

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Thompson — whose own Senate salary, including stipends, totals $99,500 annually—refused an interview request from The Buffalo News.

While The News, in reviewing Senate payroll records, found that Thompson has the biggest overhead among members of the local delegation, he lags noticeably behind at least one of his colleagues downstate.

Sen. Pedro Espada Jr., the Bronx Democrat at the center of last summer’s aborted Senate coup, had a weekly payroll that totaled $36,304 as of July 7. The Senate majority leader has 40 full-and part-time employees working for him. The entire weekly payroll of Western New York’s six senators was $49,743.

Some of the increase in Thompson’s staff and salary expenses can be attributed to the Democrats taking control of the Senate last year — to the victor go the spoils—and his appointment as chairman of the Environmental Conservation Committee.

But William T. Stachowski, the other Democratic senator in the local delegation, has not driven up his costs appreciably.

He employs the same number of full-timers on his staff — six — as he did when his party was in the minority. Unlike Thompson, who has nine part-timers on his staff, plus two others whose pay is picked up by another Senate department, Stachowski does not employ part-timers.

As a result, Stachowski’s weekly staff costs for the July 7 pay period were $6,827.

To accommodate the growth in staff, the state paid $32,693 last year to expand and refurbish Thompson’s offices in the Mahoney Office Building on Court Street in downtown Buffalo.

So, what are all of Thompson’s people getting paid to do?

Like most senators, Thompson has a full-time press secretary, Ken Houston, who’s making $55,000 a year. He’s also got a full-time director of information systems and technology. Support staff also includes a full-time legislative assistant, special assistant, executive assistant and receptionist.

Thompson also has numerous part-time liaisons — for small business, education, community and arts, cultural and faith-based initiatives. He has four people employed in various aspects of constituent relations.

Then there are four staffers whose salaries are paid out of other Senate offices. Bill Nowak is his deputy chief of staff and policy director who devotes much of his time to work on the Environmental Conservation Committee. Rashied McDuffie serves as the committee’s legal counsel and works out of Thompson’s Albany office.

Yaeger, the attorney, works out of Thompson’s office in Buffalo, and Michael Darby was his selection to help staff a regional office Senate Democrats set up in Buffalo. Both are technically considered part-time, although they work considerable hours.

One former staff member, who spoke on the condition that they were not identified, said some of Thompson’s staff works hard on Senate business. But the source estimated that the staff in the Buffalo office spends up to half its time working on social events that Thompson sponsors — including breakfasts, luncheons, picnics, dances, spelling bees — and the senator’s participation in parades and other public events.

“We were always planning for events,” the source said.

One of the most time-consuming of them was a Veterans Day Parade last November that was routed along Delaware Avenue to City Hall. The staff worked for months on the parade, the source said, and consumed a lot of Thompson’s deputy chief of staff’s time. Another parade is scheduled Nov. 11.

jheaney@buffnews.comnull