For Democratic Nassau County Executive candidate Adam Haber, Nassau is like a business – and the business is in dire need of new management.
The East Hills resident is new to county politics, and will have to face the opposition of two parties if he is to claim that corner office in Mineola. The county Democratic leadership is lined up behind former County Executive Tom Suozzi, and current County Executive Edward Mangano will have the full backing of the GOP in his re-election effort.
But Haber argues that his business experience as an investor and his work as a trustee on the Roslyn school board qualify him for the job, and that the county’s recent leadership from both sides of the aisle has not gotten the job done.
“We’re filled with patronage. We’re filled with cronyism,” Haber said in an interview. “Suozzi and Mangano failed to fix issues in their terms.”
“I’m hard pressed to find one big victory that either of them have done,” Haber continued.
Haber, who worked as a commodities trader before opening restaurants and joining the Roslyn school board, said he would work to correct what he characterized as the county’s fiscal mismanagement during both Suozzi’s and Mangano’s terms.
“I’ve taken capital and made it grow. I’ve created jobs,” Haber said.
He took aim at Mangano’s and Suozzi’s fiscal and economic records, arguing that both candidates had raised fees or taxes, allowed Nassau to decline economically and failed to address a tax assessment system that has left the county with hundreds of millions in unfunded property tax refunds.
For their parts, Mangano and Suozzi have strongly defended their policies. Suozzi has argued that his administration’s property tax hike was necessary to save Nassau from near-bankruptcy, and Mangano has touted his no-new-taxes platform while pointing to fiscal stabilization initiatives like ending the county’s tax refund guarantee to special districts and implementing the Nassau Interim Finance Authority’s wage freeze for public employees.
But Haber portrayed those actions as hollow. He said that while Mangano did not raise taxes, he hiked fees across the county.
“Those things are huge taxes. If you don’t want to call it a tax as a sound bite, great,” Haber said.
Two major fiscal reform efforts – the wage freeze and Mangano’s effort to end the county guarantee, shifting responsibility for tax refunds to schools and special districts – are in the appeals process after being struck down in court. Those efforts have been mishandled, Haber said.
While the police contract approved by Suozzi is costing Nassau a lot of money, Haber said, that contract needs to be honored.
“The cops are owed the money. Those are contractual obligations,” he said.
And Mangano’s attempt to end the county guarantee was not fair to the schools, he added.
“What you’re doing is a shell game of you push it onto the schools without fixing it,” Haber said.
The aspiring county executive said he has a plan for fixing Nassau’s assessment system to reduce the number of tax certiorari cases, but would not discuss the details, saying he was saving its release for later in the campaign.
Haber said he got out of the commodities trading business in 2009, and was elected to the Roslyn school board that same year.
“I wanted to try to do more things that were community focused,” he said.
And while he touts a groundswell of community support as the basis of what he describes as a grassroots campaign, his trading did leave him with a fundraising advantage many grassroots candidates lack.
Haber has loaned $2 million in personal funds to his campaign, jump starting his campaign and enabling him to enlist the services of New York City political consulting firm Darrison Barrett & Associates.
Haber would not disclose precisely how much he has raised from other sources, saying the figure is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. That information will be made public in July, which all the candidates will file public campaign finance reports.
The distinction between himself and his opponents, Haber said, is vision. He said that upon joining the school board, he quickly introduced changes – including consolidating bus services with other districts – that saved money but had not been considered because of other administrators’ resistance to change.
And among the savings he hopes to create for Nassau, which he said he would roll out in full later in the race, are the institution of direct deposit for county employees, more efficient lighting in county buildings and the possible leasing of unused rooftop space to solar energy companies.
One of his main goals, Haber said, is making Nassau an attractive place to live and work for a younger generation of Long Islanders often cannot afford to move back after college – a problem emphasized by both Suozzi and Mangano as well.
“How do you stimulate the economy? You make this a great beacon for businesses and start ups,” Haber said.
As a school board member, Haber said he has been on the front lines of Nassau County’s efforts to attract such businesses through the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency. He said he intended to use the county IDA to attract large businesses that would produce strong job growth.
The IDA grants tax concessions to attract businesses to create or protect jobs in Nassau, but school officials – whose districts take the hit of lower tax revenues from IDA deals – have criticized the agency in recent months for considering tax breaks for projects that they say do not deserve preferential treatment.
Haber said that the IDA has entertained questionable projects and should focus its efforts in attracting large, multinational corporations that would provide major economic and job boosts to the county. But he stopped short of saying whether he would make changes to the IDA’s board of directors, who are appointed by the county executive, should he be elected.
“I think they’re not maximizing their potential,” Haber said.
Reach reporter Dan Glaun by e-mail at dglaun@theislandnow.com or by phone at 516.307.1045 x203. Also follow us on Twitter @theislandnow1 and Facebook at facebook.com/theislandnow.
