Proposed spending cuts include layoffs

Facing a fiscal crisis, Nassau County’s leaders have difficult decisions to make. Raising property taxes and imposing budget cuts are two options. County Executive Ed Mangano said last week that he would choose the latter.

Last week, Mangano unveiled details of a plan that will trim about $121 million from the county’s $2.6 billion budget for next year, in order to spare residents what he said would be a 21.5 percent property tax increase. The cuts include hundreds of layoffs and an employee wage freeze.

“By reducing spending and Nassau’s work force,” Mangano said, “I am taking the appropriate steps required to protect our homeowners from a property tax increase.”

In January, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority declared that the county’s 2011 budget was unbalanced, and took control of its finances. During what it described as a “control period,” NIFA — a seven-member board created by the state in 2000 to monitor the county’s finances — will force the county to pass a budget with a deficit of no more than 1 percent. NIFA has the ability to approve, disapprove or modify the county budget and can also stop the county from borrowing. County officials insist that the budget is balanced, but NIFA claims that the budget has an operating deficit of more than 7 percent.

When NIFA announced that it would be implementing a control period, Mangano made his frustration clear. “Although the county comptroller and County Legislature concluded that the 2011 budget was balanced, NIFA took the unprecedented step to impose a control period not even one month into the budget year,” he said in a release in late January. “Simply put, NIFA’s action is unfounded, unfair and wrong.”

In response to what he characterized as a politically motivated move, Mangano filed a lawsuit against NIFA in an effort to do away with the control period. Mangano claimed that NIFA was changing accounting practices and creating a “paper deficit” that would lead to a 21.5 percent tax increase for residents. But last week, State Supreme Court Justice Arthur Diamond dismissed the county’s case, upholding NIFA’s authority.