Democratic Nassau County Legislators introduced a bill last week to prevent the Legislature from ever again passing an unbalanced budget.
While there is little question that the Republican legislators’ decision on Nov. 7 to approve a budget for 2017 in which revenues fell $70 million short of expenses is a gross abdication of their responsibilities, there is already a remedy in place.
It’s called an election.
In a world in which elections expressed the will of the people, legislators who failed to match revenues with expenses while county finances were in the 16th year of state supervision amid a series of political corruption scandals would be given their marching orders by voters.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in a world, or a county, in which elections are completely determined by the will of the people.
Instead, as Donald Trump said during the campaign, we live in one in which the system is rigged — though not for the reasons Trump gave.
In the case of Nassau County, and jurisdictions across the country, the system is rigged by the gerrymandering of legislative districts.
That is why the Democrat’s call for legislation to require the Legislature to approve a balanced budget is nothing more than political posturing.
It has no chance to pass — no matter its merits — since Republicans outnumber Democrats 12-7 in the Legislature and Democrats and Republicans routinely vote along straight party lines.
This 12-7 breakdown was essentially set in stone when the 2010 census was tabulated.
At the time, Republicans held a 10-9 advantage in the Legislature but voting as a bloc they were able to craft changes to district lines to more or less guarantee a 12-7 Republican advantage until the next census.
The technique is simple.
If you have 20,000 people in four districts split equally between Democrats and Republicans construct one district with 5,000 Democrats and no Republicans, and three with 1,667 versus 3,333 made up of registered Republicans.
The result is one district in which a Democrat is virtually assured of being elected and three in which Republicans are virtually guaranteed election — even if the same number of Democrats and Republicans vote.
County Republicans were not quite as obvious, but thanks to the latest techniques in determining likely voters and their preferences the effect is essentially the same.
This is not a Nassau County problem, but rather than a national disease that has contributed to so much political polarization in the country.
The U.S. Congress is a prime example.
State Legislatures across the county — both Republican and Democratic dominated — have used the same techniques as Nassau County Republicans to draw Congressional lines maximizing their party’s advantage — regardless of how convoluted and senseless the districts are.
The makeup of the House was also more or less guaranteed for the next decade when the district lines were redrawn after the 2010 census.
The result is that candidates of both parties in safe districts became more concerned by a candidate of their own party successfully challenging them in a primary than losing in the general election. This has played a major role in turning compromise with the other party into a dirty word. Republicans who stray face challenges to their right and Democrats to their left.
But the legislators are not the only ones responsible for this mess.
Their accomplices, wittingly or not, are members of the public who blindly vote along straight party lines — regardless of the merits of the candidate. Or the many who don’t vote at all and allow partisans more interested in personal benefits than the public good to determine the winner.
Trump famously said during the campaign that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I would lose votes.”
The same could be said by Republican Nassau County legislators, who first failed to properly oversee county contracts and then opposed meaningful legislation to avoid abuses in the future — despite the conviction of then state Sen. Majority Leader Dean Skelos and indictment of Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, both Republicans, on charges of political corruption tied to county contracts.
Instead, they pass a budget in which revenues fall $70 million short of expenses.
This is the price of apathy, blind loyalty and gerrymandered districts.
In Nassau County, we can begin to fix this problem by putting redistricting into the hands of an independent commission.
Nassau County could then become a model of good governance for the nation, rather than a laughingstock.
