Mangano revises spending plan

New budget could preserve social service funding

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Nonprofit social-service agencies like Rockville Centre’s Confide Counseling and Consultation Center were facing steep funding cuts by Nassau County as late as Monday night.

The county had a $36 million hole in its $2.9 billion budget that it needed to fill. Nassau officials had proposed slashing funding for youth services, including for agencies like Confide, to fill that gap.

Then, on Dec. 5, County Executive Ed Mangano submitted a new budget to the county’s financial control board, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, after his previous spending plan was rejected because it relied on uncertain revenue sources to close shortfalls, officials confirmed on Tuesday.

In his most recent spending plan, Mangano found savings in other sectors of the budget (see sidebar, page 3) in order to avoid cutting youth services. That’s according to Eric Naughton, the county’s deputy county executive for finance.

On Tuesday, leaders at social service agencies like Confide were breathing a collective sigh of relief –– at least for now.

A NIFA spokesman said Tuesday that the board, which has the power to accept or reject the new spending plan, and make its own cuts if necessary, had received the new county budget “within the last 24 hours,” and that it was under review.

NIFA’s rejection of the budget last week had left the Legislature with little time to come up with a new plan for closing a $36 million budgetary deficit before the control board instituted its own sweeping cuts. Mangano’s office previously offered a contingency plan that would close the gap but threatened to leave many local social service agencies short of funding.

County Youth Board agencies like Confide, which provide important services such as early intervention and drug treatment, would have faced suspension of funding after three months under that plan, and may still face cuts if NIFA does not accept Mangano’s revised budget.

Art Rosenthal, Confide’s executive director, expressed cautious optimism that his agency would continue to receive county funding. “I don’t have optimism, I have hope,” Rosenthal said. “I hope that they can do their job and work it out so that other people don’t have to suffer the consequences of an ineffective government.”

At the Legislature’s Nov. 21 meeting, a number of representatives of youth-service agencies had urged legislators to find a way to avoid cuts that could hurt the county’s more vulnerable populations.

“You have a responsibility to balance the budget, and not to do it on the backs of the children and families of Nassau County,” said Dr. Joseph Smith, executive director of Long Beach Reach.

Jeff Reynolds, president and CEO of the Family and Children’s Association, warned that cutting addiction and recovery services would almost certainly lead to more opioid-related deaths next year.

Apparently, county officials got the message.

Rosenthal said that Confide receives nearly $540,000 from the county each year. Most of that money goes to paying employees, the rent at the medical building on Hempstead Avenue, worker’s compensation insurance and office services. Cutting its county contracts could have forced the agency to slash payments to employees and vendors with which it does business.

“Everything is going to be delayed if we don’t get our money,” Rosenthal told the Herald last week, before the county restored funding to youth services. “It’s going to cause a lot of damage.”

Another program that could have been affected by the proposed county cuts was the Hispanic Brotherhood of Rockville Centre, a not-for-profit established in 1984 that helps immigrants from Spanish-language countries adapt to the U.S.

According to a spokesman, NIFA will take up Mangano’s new budget proposal at its public meeting on Dec. 14, the same day the Legislature is set to vote on revenue-related amendments to the budget.

Nassau County Legislator Howard Kopel, a Republican from Lawrence, last week chalked up NIFA’s rejection of the budget to political brinksmanship. “It could be people just playing chicken,” he said. “Nobody wants to do draconian things.”

Kopel said he did not believe the communities in his district would be drastically affected if and when cuts do happen, in whatever form they might come. “We’ve got some needy people in towns like Rockville Centre, Hewlett and Oceanside, but for the most part they’re fairly well-to-do,” he said. “In Nassau County, we have some pretty poor areas, and those are the ones we have to be concerned about.”