Nassau County employees will again be facing layoffs following the county Legislature’s failure Monday to approve the borrowing of $41 million to pay for property tax refunds.
Nassau County Budget Director Eric Naughton informed department heads in a memo on Tuesday they will have to come up with more than 3 percent in savings on salaries this year.
In what was titled a “confidential memo,” which was released on County Executive Edward Mangano’s Nassau County News Network Web site, Naughton wrote that department heads will have to reduce their 2012 budgets by 3.5 percent.
Although the memo did not stipulate when the cuts must take place, Naughton said the reduction in staff came in response to the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority’s mandate that officials must identify “over $150 million of recurring annualized savings” from labor expenses.
“To prepare for the aforementioned budget reduction, you must prepare a list identifying what titles – and the number of positions in that title – you would eliminate to achieve these savings,” Naughton said in the memo.
“This will be an estimate,” he continued. “Nassau County Civil Service will calculate the specific impact – including the identification of the individuals who will be laid off as a result of the elimination of positions.”
On Monday, the Democratic caucus of the county Legislature did not vote in favor of the borrowing of $41 million to pay for property tax refunds.
For any borrowing to be approved, the 19-member Legislature would have had to support the proposal by a two-thirds majority.
With Republicans holding a 10-9 majority, that would mean at least three members of the Democratic caucus would have had to cross party lines for any borrowing approval.
Democrats in the Legislature have previously indicated they would not support any further borrowing to pay for the property tax refunds until an agreement is made with Republicans on what they term as fair redistricting plans.
“I find myself in agreement with (Democratic) Legislator Delia (DeRiggi) Whitton. When she spoke she said that life is a series of choices,” the county Legislature’s Presiding Officer Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa) said following the vote on Monday. “She’s absolutely correct. Those choices were made in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009 under the previous administration.”
Schmitt said the county’s bad financial policies made under former Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, “created a swirling problem that is going to hit us now.”
“We have choices to make that we have to make to go forward and make sure that these items are answered,” Schmitt said.
Last week, community-service coalitions from across Long Island protested funding cuts to at least 40 of the county’s social service agencies, which were proposed by Mangano.
In failing to approve the borrowing for property tax refunds, the county Legislature also sealed the fate of the social service agencies, which were seeking to receive $4 million in funding before they would be forced to close down on July 6.
Funding for the more than 40 youth service agencies was previously made available through revenue from Nassau’s red-light cameras.
The county Legislature’s Minority Leader Kevan Abrahams (D-Freeport) said all of these cuts could have been avoided.
Democratic legislators called upon the county to use a $22 million surplus in sales tax revenues to offset the NIFA-required $150 million in annual labor savings.
But Naughton told the legislators during their meeting on Monday that the sales tax revenues could not be used for the purpose of offsetting the labor savings.
“The county executive has made the policy decision to cut you,” Abrahams said of the social service agencies cuts. “The cut that we were talking about in terms of the $40 million in bonding, the very item that everyone is voting on as we speak, is being addressed through a board transfer that was done last week.”
“This was all done,” he added, “for nothing more than headlines.”
Maria Elisa Cuadra, who is resident of the Long Island Hispanic Coalition and CEO of Great Neck-based community service organization COPAY Inc., said she was disappointed with the county legislators’ inability to come to an agreement on borrowing in a news release on Tuesday.
“This deadlock has left the county’s most vulnerable, i.e. low income children, teens, the mentally ill, the chemically dependent and the frail elderly, with no county funded services effective July 6th,” Cuadra said in the statement. “Approximately 180,000 people will be without vital care and over 500 jobs will be lost by area professionals.”
Attempts to reach NIFA officials and county executive spokesman Brian Nevin were unavailing.
In a Newsday story, NIFA Chairman Ronald Stack said the requested $41 million in borrowing was not the concern of his organization. He said NIFA is “solely concerned” with the $150 million in labor savings that Mangano is supposed to create in 2012.
“The fiscal challenges before the county remain great,” Stack said in the Newsday story. “All participants need to work together to achieve progress toward fiscal balance with financially responsible and sustaining actions . . . without becoming distracted by one-shot transactions.”
