Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman said last week that in coming weeks he will begin evaluating his political future with a possible run against Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano in 2013 apparently foremost in his mind.
“It’s time for me to look for my future options and where I can make the most difference,” Kaiman said in a wide-ranging interview last week with Blank Slate Media. “There’s an attraction to seeing a larger government right at my doorstep that is in need of another philosophy and another skill set.”
On the heels of a less than resounding victory in his November race against Republican challenger Lee Tu, Kaiman said he is weighing how he could best make a difference in government at the end of his two-year term.
Kaiman said he didn’t know whether being in a position to make a difference “means running for county executive or running for some other office or working for the state or some governor somewhere or in the private sector somewhere.”
He said he would consult with his political supporters, his family and possibly Gov. Andrew Cuomo in considering his options.
But Kaiman repeatedly took aim at Mangano during the interview. Included were Mangano’s refusal to consider raise taxes to close the county’s budget deficit, his proposal to eliminate two police precincts and the deal with Veolia Transportation to take over operation of Long Island Bus.
“The county has taken a position that they’re going to de-fund government. It’s a political philosophy,” he said. “I think the county is foregoing its responsibility to meet its own responsibility. The [police] precincts are one example.”
“I oppose de-funding government. I think government has a responsibility to fulfill its obligation to provide the services that it’s obligated to provide,” Kaiman said, citing police and fire protection along with sanitation and public works as examples.
Kaiman was equally blunt in slamming the deal the Mangano administration engineered for Veolia Transportation to take over the county bus service from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
“This is a disaster. This is going to cost untold millions of dollars when we have to subsidize the [bus] system or when we have to buy back the system, as we inevitably will.”
He said the county government was “forfeiting” its responsibility to provide public transportation.
“At some point we’re going to realize that this system is totally inadequate to our communities needs,” Kaiman said.
He said an analysis of the system should have been conducted and some form of partnership formed with the MTA in the context of an intermunicipal pact that would have spawned a more efficient bus transportation system.
He drew a contrast between the county’s strategy and the tact his administration took in eliminating its own bus service for senior citizens under the town’s Project Independence.
Kaiman said the town preserved transportation of town seniors for appointments and grocery shopping and saved $500,000 annually by negotiating an agreement with taxi companies and spitting the cost of taxi service with users.
Kaiman, who drew 53 percent of the vote against Tu’s 46 percent, dismissed his relatively small margin of victory over Tu in the recent election. He attributed the closeness of the race to his implementation of strict enforcement policies in the town building department following a department scandal. He said the town’s tight enforcement might prove a positive outside the Town of North Hempstead.
The election result, he said, was a “snapshot of where we are at a particular moment” that might not factor into his decision
“In the long run, if I felt that I was the right person to run and it was the right thing for me to do, I would put myself out there. You have to be willing to take those risks. What weakened me locally could make me stronger countywide,” said Kaiman, who said several times during his interview that he had taken “shots” for his positions.
In recent months, Kaiman, Nassau County Legislator Wayne Wink (D-Roslyn) and former Nassau County Comptroller Howard S. Weitzman has been widely discussed as possible opponents of Mangano. A resident of Great Neck, Kaiman was first elected town supervisor in 2004 after having served as a Nassau County District Court Judge.
After a period of reflection following the campaign that concluded in November, Kaiman said he is also ready to address the issues he sees as those most pressing in the town.
“We’re going to come out of the gate swinging in January, do some reorganization and address some of these brush fires that have been burning, including building department issues, the Roslyn Country Club and Clinton G. Martin Park,” he said.
Kaiman said that in his new term he intended to build on management changes that he had already put in place to make town operations more efficient and better supervised.
He said “rigorous” code enforcement standards now established in the town Building department would be maintained, along with strict performance standards for the building inspectors in the wake of the scandal that shook the department with indictments and convictions against five Building Department employees, including the head of the department, shortly after Kaiman took office eight years ago.
He said the town’s 311 phone line creates a record of any complaints received by all town departments including the building department. He said this ensures strong accountability for employees in all the town’s departments.
In a meeting last week Kaiman said he informed representatives of the town’s Civil Service Employees Association 1000 of his plans to make some personnel changes without laying employees off. He said he intended to replace clerical staff with more skilled employees in some departments. The town is negotiating a new contract with the CSEA unit after recently settling on a 2 percent pay increase for 2011.
Kaiman said he also remained “pretty confident” that the town can strike a deal to purchase the Roslyn Country Club, a 10-acre property in Roslyn Heights. He said he hoped to have a meeting this week with Manouchehr Malekan, the current owner of Roslyn Country Club,.
Kaiman said the town has applied for a $500,000 state grant and money from an untapped environmental legacy fund to help cover the $3 million estimated cost to purchase the property, which includes a pool and tennis courts in need of refurbishing.
He said that $1 or $2 the deal might cost taxpayers over two years should not kill the opportunity to preserve open space and create a town facility that will be self-supporting by families joining for $1,000 annually.
“Some people say unless we can guarantee unequivocally that we are not going to spend one penny of anyone else’s tax dollars then we shouldn’t do it. I don’t agree with that,” he said.
Kaiman said he thinks Malekan is negotiating in good faith and said he wants to make a deal with Malekan “fairly quickly.”
He said he intended to pursue the deal, despite vocal opposition in public hearings on the town’s prospective plans earlier this yea.
“I took a hit for it, but I’m going to get it resolved,” he said.
Kaiman also dismissed efforts by Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos to audit the finances of the town-operated Clinton G. Martin Park as politically motivated. He said “people within (Maragos’) operation” and “local gadflies” pushed the issue to hurt his re-election campaign, charging that Maragos had hired a number of people because of their connections of the Nassau County Republican party.
Maragos had called for the audit because of alleged discrepancies in payments made by the town to the New Hyde Park Park District for its lease of a building in Clinton G, Martin Park.
Kaiman called the attempted audit a move “to devalue our government, because that was their goal” and said only the state comptroller and not the county comptroller had the authority to audit a town-controlled park district.
He said he was hopeful that a lawsuit the town brought against the county to prevent the audit would result in a decision in the town’s favor in appellate court.
“Some people in the community were looking for ways to embarrass me and my administration. I don’t think it was ever a matter of the truth,” Kaiman said.
He conceded that the town’s bookkeeping on the park district had been “a little sloppy,” but said that problem had been corrected with new accounting procedures.
Reach reporter Richard Tedesco by e-mail at rtedesco@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x204
