The New York Power Authority says a state audit criticizing its high salaries and diversion of revenue to the state budget “misinterprets key facts and ignores reforms” the authority has made.

The audit, by Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office, points out that 35 percent of the authority’s annual salaries to its 1,636 full-and part-time employees are over $100,000, which amounts to nearly half of NYPA’s total compensation. “By comparison, just 14 percent of state public authority employees as a whole earn more than $100,000, and only 8 percent of state employees earn as much,” a statement accompanying the audit report said.

The audit also suggested that the millions of dollars the authority turns over each year to prop up the state budget might be better used to lower the price of the hydroelectric power the authority generates.

“The state regularly relies on NYPA for budget relief, which could pose future challenges for NYPA’s ability to deliver low-cost power,” DiNapoli said. “New Yorkers pay some of the highest electricity rates in the country and need the rate relief that NYPA could provide if it appropriately focused its resources.”

The report said this year’s state budget authorized a payment of $90 million from NYPA to the state, “continuing a long history of diverting NYPA funds to cover state expenses. Such payments – more than $1.2 billion in the past decade – may have been a factor in NYPA’s recent request to increase transmission charges paid by customers statewide.”

The report also reviewed executive and travel expenses incurred by NYPA, including a jet aircraft.

NYPA, based in White Plains, says the audit report is a result of misunderstandings by the comptroller.

“If they had contacted us at any time during this process, we would have been glad to clear up these misconceptions,” said Michael Saltzman of NYPA in a press release issued in response to the audit report.

A response to the audit from Saltzman says moving tens of millions of dollars a year from NYPA power-generating revenues to the state budget has no effect on what NYPA charges for its power.

NYPA’s low power rates are unaffected by its financial contributions to New York State.

Regardless, Saltzman says, “The contributions have been significantly reduced since 2011 and have become more predictable going forward.”

And he says other public power utilities in Florida, Arizona and Texas “have made contributions in their jurisdictions.”

He says that NYPA salaries are “comparable to other large public power utilities in the U.S., but significantly lower than investor-owned electric utilities in New York State. NYPA must pay competitive salaries in order to attract and retain qualified personnel to run its highly technical and complex generation and transmission facilities.”

And Saltzman notes that NYPA offers the lowest cost power in New York State to its customers, including businesses that commit to create and protect jobs.

As for the jet, Saltzman says, it’s not a jet, and that the plane helps NYPA personnel get to remote places like the North Country.

“NYPA has a small eight-seat prop plane—not a jet. The plane is used by NYPA engineers and operating personnel in monitoring, maintaining and upgrading the authority’s 16 power plants, more than 1,400 circuit-miles of transmission lines and 14 large substations across the state -- and only after a cost-benefit analysis of other modes of travel before each flight. The NYPA plane has been of great value for transporting personnel to hard-to-get-to NYPA locations such as our large hydroelectric power plant, transmission lines and substations in northern New York and for quickly dispatching engineering personnel in case of facility emergencies.”