Our Views: Plague on both their houses

The Island Now

Norma Gonsalves, the Nassau County Legislature’s Republican majority leader, and eight other GOP legislators last week called on fellow Republican Ed Mangano to resign as county executive, citing federal corruption charges hanging over Mangano.

“We need to lift the cloud that is above our county government,” said Legislator Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park), the Legislature’s deputy presiding officer. “We need to restore the public’s faith in its elected officials. … We believe that for the good of the county, of Nassau County, and the residents that we serve, that our county executive should step down.”

No disagreement there.

But Mangano refused, saying that “unlike Norma Gonsalves, I have never been convicted of any wrongdoing.”

It says much about the sorry state of Nassau County’s governance that we believe both the legislators and Mangano are right.

A state court found in 2016 that Gonsalves violated state campaign finance disclosure rules eight times between 2013 and 2015 and ordered her and the East Meadow Republican’s campaign committee to pay $14,000 in fines.

The state Board of Elections had earlier brought legal action against Gonsalves after finding that she failed to file reports listing her campaign’s donors and expenses at least 34 times between January 2006 and February 2015.

Gonsalves blamed the missing filings on confusion with the Board of Elections’ electronic filing system and her campaign treasurer. In other words, the dog ate my homework.

In a county wracked by ongoing fiscal crises and allegations of corruption Gonsalves should no longer be a member of the county Legislature, let alone serve as its leader.

The same is true for Mangano, whom we have twice called on to resign — the first just days after his arrest.

Gonsalves and the eight other legislators have now reached the same conclusion, but their motives are, to be charitable, dubious.

Their call for Mangano to resign came more than five months after Mangano and his wife, Linda, and then Town of Oyster Bay Supervisor John Venditto were arrested on federal corruption charges.

But just days after Edward Ambrosino, a Republican Town of Hempstead councilman, was charged with federal tax evasion and wire fraud.

That sounds a whole lot more like political self-interest than the interests of Nassau County.

Ambrosino, who had also served as counsel for the Nassau County Industrial Development Agency and as special counsel to Mangano, was the sixth public official in Nassau whom federal authorities have arrested since 2015 — and the fifth Republican.

This does not include Rob Walker, Mangano’s chief deputy, who has admitted he is under investigation for political corruption. In a nice family touch, his mother, Rose Marie Walker, was one of three county legislators not to call for Mangano’s resignation.

Walker’s admission that he was under investigation came during the trial of then state Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos on charges of political corruption that included a county contract. The Rockville Centre Republican was later found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison.

“Enough is enough,” Gonsalves said, referring to her call for Mangano’s resignation, but apparently not her continued position as head of the county Legislature.

The nine Republicans did say they gave Mangano the benefit of the doubt after he was charged in October in an alleged bribe and kickback scheme involving the exchange of county contracts for gifts and favors.

But in that time he has failed to combat the public suspicion that the Republican-controlled county government is not doing the “job of the people,” Gonsalves said.

The legislators praised Mangano’s work, but decided the county could not move forward with an “increasingly distracted” leader as it prepares  to renegotiate labor contracts and reassess properties for the tax rolls next year while monitoring a tight 2017 budget, Nicolello said.

But no mention was made of the Legislature’s repeated failures to properly supervise the awarding of county contracts and the Republican legislators’ opposition to a proposal by District Attorney Madeline Singas for an inspector general to oversee county contracts.

Nor was anything said about the upcoming fall elections in which the seats of all members of the Legislature are up.

Nassau’s Republican Party has controlled the county executive’s office for 63 of the 79 years it has existed and all but two of the years in which the county Legislature has been in existence. They have also gerrymandered county Legislature districts in such a way that it would take a political tsunami for them to lose the majority.

A tsunami did strike in 2001 after the county — one of the most affluent in New York State — needed a $100 million state bailout to avoid bankruptcy.

It was then that the Democrats took control of county government.

By their call for Mangano’s resignation, the Republican legislators clearly fear another political tsuanmi in the fall. Just as clearly, they deserve one.

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