The race for Nassau County executive has seen Democrat Laura Curran and Republican Jack Martins lobbing the occasional accusation at one another. But none of that vitriol was on display Tuesday night when the two candidates held a debate at Sands Point Preserve.
“We have two candidates we can be proud of, and I can’t say we’ve always had that opportunity,” moderator Peter Forman said at the end of the debate.
About 100 residents attended the debate at the Hempstead House, a Tudor-style castle that was once the summer residence of the Guggenheim family. Although billed as a debate, there was little actual back-and-forth between the candidates. They took turns answering questions provided by Forman, and only once was there a rebuttal.
Forman started the debate by saying the election winner would have a tall task ahead.
“The first question is a joke: why would you want this job?” Forman said, which drew laughter from the candidates and the audience.
From there, Forman quickly dived into the questions, some of which were submitted by the audience. The night was dominated by two issues: fixing the county’s budget and eliminating corruption.
“We’ve had administrations from both parties that have failed to deal with this issue,” Martins said of the budget. Among his proposals was to cut overtime for county employees in half, which would save the county $60 million a year.
Both candidates called the amount of time the county has spent under a financial watchdog, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, “embarrassing.”
One way to help balance the budget would be to reform the property assessment system in the county. Both agreed that the assessment system was broken, but disagreed over how it should be fixed. Martins wanted the towns to do the assessment but Curran said that would not happen.
“Unfortunately, the towns don’t want it,” she said. “This is an idea that has been floated and failed.”
Instead, she wants to hire a credentialed assessor and hire a staff that would be able to reassess every year.
Both were in agreement that the county should put its financial books online, and each called for more transparency to root out corruption and restore public trust.
“This is an easy decision to make,” Martins said. “But it’s also about putting meetings online. We have to go further.”
The candidates shared similar views on how to make the county more attractive to companies and young people. Both called for better infrastructure, with Curran in particular calling for improved public transit via ferries and buses. But both acknowledged that such projects will not be possible until the county gets its budget in order.
When it came to corruption, Martins said the county’s Board of Ethics was not sufficiently staffed and funded. Curran said that she would limit the amount of money that can be donated to political campaigns by people who do business with the county.
“This is the issue of the campaign, I think,” she said.
Martins disagreed.
“I just take issue with one thing… the issue of campaign, as much as it’s about corruption, as much as it’s restoring public trust, it has to be about fixing this county going forward, and the finances in this county,” he said.
It was one of the few moments of clear disagreement between the two candidates.
As the attendees made their way to the exit, several people said that they did not have a clear favorite and that both made good points during the debate.
“They were both extremely professional and gave us hope for the future of Nassau County,” said Georgia DeYoung, chair of Sands Point’s Historic Landmarks Preservation Committee.
