For those accustomed to things going wrong in Nassau County, which is to say just about everyone living in the county, the week before Christmas was a strange mix of the unexpectedly good.
First, the Nassau County Legislature unanimously approved legislation creating an independent inspector general to investigate waste and fraud in county programs.
Anyone awake during the administration of Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano understands how important that is. And if anyone has forgotten, Mangano’s corruption trial, set to start in March, is sure to serve as a good reminder.
The Legislature’s vote is the culmination of a nearly two-year effort by Democratic lawmakers to increase scrutiny of county contractors that included blocking hundreds of millions of dollars in capital borrowing. That money will now be freed up.
Republican had legislators adamantly opposed the legislation.
And then Laura Curran, a Democratic legislator, won the race for county executive, running a campaign against Nassau corruption that featured an independent inspector general.
Republican legislators at first responded with a proposal for an independent inspector general who could be fired with 11 votes of the Legislature, the same as the number of Republicans now in the 19-member Legislature. So much for independent.
The Republicans have now agreed to a Democratic plan to require a bipartisan 13 votes.
Elections do have consequences. And in this case, it is a good one for a county government whose credibility was shredded under Mangano.
A few days later came the second cause for celebration — the state announced the selection of a development team led by the New York Islanders that will invest $1 billion in private funds to transform Belmont Park into a state-of-the-art sports and entertainment destination.
The plan calls for 435,000 square feet of space of retail stores, restaurants and a movie theater; a hotel with 200 to 250 rooms and nearly six acres of outdoor recreation space.
The plan will also include construction of an 18,000-seat arena that will bring the Islanders back to Long Island.
It was the loss of the Islanders that marked a low point for the county, a self-inflicted wound that left Nassau without a major league sports team.
Former team owner Charles Wang had several years earlier proposed a privately funded, $3.7 billion development that included the renovation of Nassau Coliseum, 2,300 units of housing, 1 billion square feet of office space, 500,000 square feet of retail and a luxury hotel.
Wang said the plan was needed to keep the Islanders on Long Island.
The Hempstead Town Board killed the project in 2010, saying it was too dense for the community.
In 2011, Mangano held a referendum in July on a plan to borrow $400 million in taxpayer money to renovate the Coliseum. It lost and the Islanders signed a deal to move to Brooklyn in 2015 season.
The county later burnished its can’t-do, won’t-do image by transferring its authority to install 1,000 video slot machines to Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens after failing not once but twice to gain support for them in Westbury and then Belmont.
There were reasonable arguments to oppose the terminals in both locations.
But the cash-strapped county’s inability to handle a revenue-producing facility happily accepted by New York City only furthered Nassau reputation for dysfunction.
Nassau’s streak of getting nothing done actually ended when after much gnashing of teeth a plan to build a third track on the Long Island Rail Road’s Main Line from Floral Park to Hicksville was approved.
The project will boost capacity through the bottlenecked segment of its Main Line, through which about half of all LIRR customers travel, eliminate seven above-ground railroad crossings, upgrade stations and provide for a variety of improvements along the line.
Nassau County actually can’t take too much credit since the project was the idea of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the MTA and they had both the funding and a right-of-way to build on. But, hey, a win’s a win.
Just two weeks ago, the MTA approved a $1.9 billion contract for the design and construction of the third track.
The two project’s and the county Legislature’s new-found ability to work across party lines comes just in time.
With the tax plan approved last week by Republicans in Congress and signed into law by President Trump, Nassau County taxpayers face a large financial hit thanks to a provision that limits the deduction of property taxes to $10,000.
This can be expected to put a heavy strain on governments at every level in the state.
We can hope that Nassau County’s experience dealing with dysfunctional government will serve it well in responding to Washington’s dysfunction.
