"Jacobs: Mondello skilled in blame-shifting"

Reposted from Jay Jacobs, Chairman of the Nassau County Democratic Committee

By Jay Jacobs
Published: June 28, 2012 by Long Island Business News.
In last week’s column, Nassau Republican Chairman Joe Mondello was adamant in his assertion that the county’s dire fiscal crisis was – and continues to be – the result of errors made by the previous Democratic leadership (“A political challenge across the aisle”). I admit that I am in awe of Chairman Mondello’s capacity to continually repackage manure, spray it with perfume and attempt, once again, to resell it to the public.

During his THREE DECADES at the helm of his party, Mondello and his hand-picked elected officials have presided over a government that has managed, in the greatest period of American economic growth, to take Nassau County, one of the nation’s richest, from the pinnacle of suburban excellence to the brink of bankruptcy. He does himself a great disservice by trying to share any of that credit with the Democrats.

Alarmingly, he continues his “streak” with his hand-picked county executive, Ed Mangano. It is disingenuous for Mangano to claim he does not have the $6.8 million to fund youth programs, yet he has had more than enough to award $10 million in legal contracts to his politically connected friends. This includes hundreds of thousands of dollars to his former employer, Rivkin Radler, over $1 million to Republican Party stalwart Peter Bee and a $300,000-a-year job to former colleague John Ciotti.

These are just a few of the most egregious examples, but it does not end there. It takes more than a patronage mill to put one of the wealthiest counties into such a downward spiral.

Mangano has now spent $27 million in police overtime, all since he has closed half of Nassau’s police precincts. He has wasted millions of dollars in failed legal battles. He has spent $2 million on politically charged, taxpayer-funded mailings; and he has spent $300,000 on trucks bearing his photo and name that do nothing but drive around the county promoting him.

Mangano has the audacity to claim that the county’s fiscal problems were caused by his Democratic predecessor’s practice of awarding rich contracts to the public employee unions. He MUST be kidding. The county began to choke under the weight of those contracts under Mondello’s other hand-picked county executive, Tom Gulotta. Remember Nassau Interim Finance Authority? The state oversight board was created in 1999 – two years BEFORE County Executive Tom Suozzi took office – to oversee a bloated budget and over-burdensome debt.

Joe Mondello approved every one of those contracts and as a legislator, Ed Mangano voted for all of them – the same contracts he now condemns! What’s worse is that Suozzi was thwarted in every effort to renegotiate them on better terms by none other than Ed Mangano and Joe Mondello. For Mondello, it has ALWAYS been about politics. For him now to complain that the whiff of politics has entered the sphere of governing is like the skunk complaining about the stench in the forest.

Let’s be clear: The county’s finances are in dire straits, the likes of which we have not seen before. The facts are that this fiscal crisis belongs to Mondello’s county executive. This deficit belongs to Mangano. The overtime and budget mess all belong to Mangano. The credit rating downgrades are owned by Mangano, as are the broken promises and the plans for savings that have not been realized.

Democrats will work with Joe Mondello and Ed Mangano when they get serious about the work that needs to be done. To date, their record is one of hair-brained schemes, failed litigation to support unlawful practices and threatened cuts to those who can least afford them, while approving huge payouts to their connected friends. THAT is not good government.

Mondello challenged me in his commentary to accept his “Taxpayer’s Fiscal Protection Act,” which had not one detail associated with it beyond the fancy title. With his leadership record of THIRTY YEARS, I submit that taking his advice is like accepting the recommendation of the captain of the Titanic to take the ship north.