Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano is embroiled in yet another bitter battle with one of the county’s most powerful unions, the Nassau County Police Benevolent Association. The PBA has launched an all-out offensive to block Mangano’s Community Policing Plan from passing in the County Legislature.
By now, I’m sure you’ve all seen a commercial, listened to a robo call or received a flier telling you that Mangano is jeopardizing our public safety. Friends, don’t let the PBA outsmart you. This battle is not about public safety. It’s politics as usual.
E.J. McMahon, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote in an op-ed for Newsday, “The current Police Benevolent Association campaign against County Executive Edward Mangano’s precinct consolidation plan marks the escalation of a conflict whose outcome could determine the county’s financial viability for many years to come.”
The median salary for a Nassau County police officer is $150,000 per year, thanks to the lucrative contracts and sweetheart deals the PBA made with the previous administration. This doesn’t even take into account their extraordinarily generous pension plans. According to McMahon, “Of the 1,652 New York State and Local Retirement System members entitled to pensions of more than $100,000 as of fiscal 2011, fully 22 percent (371) were former Nassau police officers.”
Mangano is trying to trim the county’s deficit and cut the waste. Clearly, the place to start is the police, and the way to do it is by getting rid of obvious inefficiencies.
With the help of county Democrats, the PBA is distorting the facts and claiming that Mangano is closing precincts and taking cops off the street. This couldn’t be further from the truth. The plan he has proposed seeks to convert four of the county’s eight police precincts into new “community policing centers.” If you take a careful look at the plan, you’ll see that all 177 patrol cars will remain in their current neighborhoods. More important, 48 officers now behind desks will be reassigned to high-crime areas….
You may also like
State’s Growing Budget Hole Threatens NYC Jobs and Aid as Congress Takes a Holiday
“The biggest problem for the state is the enormous, recurring structural budget gap starting next year and into the future,” said E.J. McMahon of the conservative-leaning Empire Center. “Cuomo clearly hopes that starting in 2021, (Democratic presidential candidate Joseph) Biden and a Democratic Congress will provide states and local government a couple of year’s worth of added stimulus. Read More
How Andrew Cuomo became ‘maybe the most powerful governor’ in U.S.
Ed McKinley
ALBANY — When the New York Constitution was reorganized nearly 100 years ago to give the governor more power over the budget process, noted there was a risk of making “the governor a czar."
M Read More
Study disputes Cuomo on Trump tax package; experts say it’s complicated
Michael Gormley
ALBANY — A new study by a conservative think tank says President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax law gave most New Yorkers a tax cut, even as Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo insists on repealing the measure because he says it will cost New Yo Read More
Empire Center sues Department of Health over nursing home records
Johan Sheridan
ALBANY, N.Y. () — The Empire Center filed a against the state Department of Health on Friday.
“This case isn’t about assigning blame or embarrassing political leaders,” said Bill Hammond, the Empire Center’s Read More
Good news: That New York pork isn’t going out the door after all
The Empire Center first reported Tuesday that grants — 226 of them, totaling $46 million, to recipients selected by the governor and individual state lawmakers — seemed to still be going ahead. Read More
New York Lawmakers Seek Independent Probe of Nursing-Home Coronavirus Deaths
With lingering questions about how the novel coronavirus killed thousands of New Yorkers who lived in nursing homes, a group of state lawmakers is pushing to create an independent commission to get answers from the state Department of Health. Read More
Policy analyst: Cuomo wrong to write-off nursing home criticism as political conspiracy
“The importance of discussing this and getting the true facts out is to understand what did and didn’t happen so we can learn from it in case this happens again,” Hammond said. Read More
EDITORIAL: Nursing home report requires a second opinion
No doubt, the Health Department and the governor would like this report to be the final word on the subject.
But if it’s all the same with them, we’d still like a truly independent review. Read More