Why are Nassau County’s taxes so high but it is always short of money?
A large part of that answer can be found on a website, which lists the salaries of all county employees in the state of New York.
The site, seethroughny.net, shows that the 11 highest paid county employees in the state of New York in 2017, starting with Thomas Karp at $333,345, had one thing in common – they worked for the Nassau County Police Department.
And after a Suffolk County Police Department employee comes in at the No. 12 spot, Nassau County Police Department employees are shown as the 13th to 24th highest paid employees.
The lowest paid of the employees to crack the top 25, Kenneth J. Strigaro, received $267,573.
In fact, Nassau County police dominate the lists of top earners of all county employees in New York with more than 400 making more than $200,000 a year.
The only other county that comes close is Suffolk, whose police contracts take the lead from Nassau. Not a single employee of Westchester County even cracks the top 100.
And the costs listed on the website do not even include the benefit package for Nassau police, which is among the most generous for police departments in the state.
Nassau County Executive Laura Curran submitted a revised county budget last week with $54.7 million in spending reductions and revenue hikes after the county’s financial control board imposed nearly $18 million in budget cuts.
But none of the cuts were related to the cost of county police. For a good reason: police pay is governed by contracts signed by the county.
But, going forward county police pay should be on the table.
Why?
For starters, there is that control board, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, that ordered the $18 million in budget cuts for the first time in its 17-year history. Yes, 17-year history.
NIFA was created after the county, one of the wealthiest in New York State, was unable to cover its costs and asked the state of New York for a bailout. The county got the bailout with several strings attached. One of them was NIFA.
It’s time for the state to take off the training wheels and let the county manage its own finances. But first, the county must prove that it can.
Which gets to the second point: how.
When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously said, “That’s where the money is.”
County police account for a relatively small but meaningful part of the county budget. And their contracts set precedents for all the other county unions.
Do the police earn their salaries?
It is true that 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.
That system, which goes a long way to explaining Nassau’s near-financial death experience in 2000, continues to this day.
When he was county executive, Tom Suozzi, a Democrat, attempted to rein in the number of police, their pay and their benefits.
Suozzi had mixed success in his efforts to contain spending on police and engendered the political opposition of the police unions that continues to this day.
On two occasions, Suozzi proposed that an outside consultant assess the police department’s staffing, management and operation needs. Both times the county Legislature rejected the idea.
Hopefully, the legislators have learned their lesson.
Following Curran’s election, the Republican majority in the Legislature joined with Democrats in approving the creation of an independent inspector general position to oversee all county contracts.
Curran followed by appointing a five-member bipartisan committee to select the first inspector general.
We urge Curran and the Legislature to take a similar approach with the police. Either take Suozzi’s idea of hiring a consultant or establish a bipartisan committee to study the salaries, benefits and staffing levels of the county Police Department.
Elected officials in Nassau often talk the talk of financial restraint, lamenting the high cost of living and promising to bring down spending.
Let’s see them now walk the walk.
Forego politics and begin a process to bring the county’s labor costs – and taxes – in line with the rest of the counties in the state.
