Proof that Nassau County Executive Laura Curran is on the right track with county unions appears on the cover of the county Police Benevolent Association’s most recent newsletter.
That is the newsletter with the headline “United! Against Labor” over an election night picture of Curran holding her hand up in the air with Nassau Democratic Chairman Jay Jacobs.
Curran’s sin?
She recently legally challenged a memorandum of agreement concerning longevity pay with the PBA and four other public unions in the waning days of the Mangano administration.
This does not make Curran anti-labor. It makes her pro-fiscal responsibility. This is a position rarely taken in a county whose finances have been under state supervision since 2000.
The memorandum of agreement offers an excellent example why.
For starters, it was negotiated by Mangano’s chief deputy, Rob Walker, who at the time was under federal investigation for county deals with contractors.
Walker was charged in February with obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents as part of a federal investigation into corruption in Nassau County and whether public officials received money from contractors. He pleaded not guilty.
As has his former boss, who is currently on trial on unrelated corruption charges.
We would like to think that a union representing the county’s police would show at least a hint of embarrassment in defending a contract negotiated by a man under federal investigation while serving a county executive charged with federal crimes.
The agreement negotiated by Walker calls for increases in longevity payments, which had been frozen since 2011, to begin again in July in return for the county agreeing to not lay off any union members for the first six months of this year.
The unions say the deal saves the county $5 million because the longevity increases were supposed to start in January. All five county unions subsequently ratified the agreements.
But Mangano’s own county attorney, Carnall Foskey, said at the time the pacts were not binding.
The agreement, Foskey said “exceed[ed] the ordinary terms and usual substance of a MOA.”
The county’s financial control board, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, insists longevity increases were eliminated in labor pacts that were negotiated in 2014. But those pacts, which expired in December, did not address longevity.
Curran’s willingness to take on the agreement is an indication that she is serious about cleaning up Nassau’s financial mess.
Yes, Curran’s plan to address a dysfunctional assessment system, imperfect as it may be, will help.
And yes the agreement Curran reached with Republicans in the county Legislature on an independent inspector general to oversee county contracts is a major step in the right direction.
But the county’s finances will never be put on sound financial footing until sanity is brought to labor contracts starting with the county police.
As we recently wrote, Nassau police are the highest paid county police in New York state with compensation plans that have made the 11 highest paid county employees in the state Nassau police. More than 400 members of the Nassau Police Department make more than $200,000 a year.
Nassau police also have one of the most – if not the most – generous benefit plans in the state. Which in effect has left Nassau taxpayers on the hook to pay for two high-priced police forces – current members of the force and those who have retired.
Do the police earn their salaries?
As we have said, Nassau County police do an excellent job performing a sometimes very dangerous service. Crime is down and people feel safe.
But is what they do worth so much more than every other county in the state of New York? At a time when taxes are universally considered too high and the county can’t even balance its budget?
The truth is that police salaries in Nassau County are not based on public safety or performance but politics.
Newsday recently published an exhaustive study of Long Island’s scandal-plagued political system that showed how Republican officials in the late 1960s began awarding public employee unions led by the police generous contracts in return for political support.
This can be seen in the PBA’s support of every Republican candidate for county executive for more than 50 years.
The last Democratic county executive, Tom Suozzi, attempted to rein in the number of police, their pay and their benefits.
He also proposed on two occasions that an outside consultant assess the police department’s staffing, management and operational needs – a proposal that Curran ought to take up now.
Like Curran, Suozzi also faced claims of being anti-police and anti-union and engendered the political opposition of the police unions that continues to this day.
We understand that union leaders are paid to represent the interests of their members.
But we hope Curran and voters now understand that what’s best for the PBA and other municipal unions is not what’s best for Nassau County.
