Top-paid guy to give up $750G gig

New York State’s highest-paid employee is stepping down as dean of SUNY Downstate Medical Center, the Daily News has learned.

Dr. Carlos Pato, who earned $748,680 in 2017, announced he will leave his leadership spot at the Brooklyn hospital on Aug. 31.

“I have accepted his resignation with regret and commendation,” Wayne Riley, the school’s president, said in an email to staff Tuesday.

Pato will not be off the state payroll, though.

He will continue at Downstate as a psychiatry professor “where he will focus his attention on genomic research,” Riley said.

An interim dean will be named “very shortly,” he added.

The hospital refused to say how much Pato would earn as a prof.

“SUNY Downstate does not comment on pending personnel matters,” said hospital spokeswoman Dawn Walker.

Pato, a psychiatrist and brain researcher, was appointed in July 2015. He previously worked at the University of Southern California where he served as the psychiatry professor and chairman of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Keck School of Medicine.

Some people working for public authorities earn more money, records show.

Candace Johnson earned $1.1 million with a base salary of $867,000 in 2018, according to SeeThroughNY, which tracks public pay.

Johnson works for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Corp.

As for the East Flatbush hospital, it has struggled financially in recent years.

SUNY Downstate was forced to sell Long Island College Hospital to Fortis Property Group for $240 million in 2015. As a mayoral candidate in 2013, Bill de Blasio opposed the shuttering of the community hospital and replacing it with luxury condos. He was arrested during one rally at the site.

Fortis nixed a plan to include affordable housing at the site in 2016.