Cronin for county comptroller

In the race for filling Nassau County Comptroller Jack Schnirman’s seat between Democrat Ryan E. Cronin and Republican Elaine R. Phillips, the choice to support Cronin comes down to a wholistic plan of accountability across parties and systems modernization.

Considering the controversy surrounding the office with the current Comptroller having been overpaid tens of thousands as Long Beach city manager, Cronin, 40, stated that one of his goals is to gain back the trust of his constituents.

Indeed, Cronin, a Garden City resident, has a track record as a corporate attorney, who’s dealt with complex contract disputes and fraud claims, of advocating for those who have been taken advantage of. Cronin defended over a dozen victims of the Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme and took on a global corporation to force the recall of a defective product that caused the injury and death of infants—in other words, watchdog-caliber experience.

Cronin raised a blueprint for the office’s priorities, both short- and long-term. As an immediate concern was the vendor payment process, which is plagued by chronically delayed payments that create extra costs for all parties involved. He also wants to proactively address Nassau's antiquated technology that won't be able to comply with coming accounting standards within the next three to five years.

Cronin also prioritizes building a bipartisan office, already pledging to appoint a Republican as his top deputy. Aligned with his apolitical view of how the office should run, he has critiqued County Executive Laura Curran for not collaborating with the county Republicans on jettisoning county fees and for perpetuating the structural gap between recurring county revenues and expenses.

Unlike Cronin, who lost two state senate races against Republican incumbent Kemp Hannon, Phillips has already fostered a political career. As Flower Hill mayor she stabilized the villages finances and incentivized green projects, a tenure that attests to her familiarity with local bureaucracy and financial savvy.

However, it is her time as the 7^th district state senator that has raised some red flags regarding her leadership and partisanship. As the head of the Ethics Committee, the body held few meetings, which resulted in no material progress. Also, she has campaigned for common sense gun control and child sex abuse victims, only to vote against them down party lines when on the senate floor.

Phillips has strong professional financial experience as a financial analyst for Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan, where she juggled the competing needs of her clients and her employers; however, she failed to provide specific new ideas for the office.

She said she would prioritize auditing the county’s tax reassessment that currently “lets multi-millionaires get away with paying zero in property taxes.” Notwithstanding that it is the properties that are the ones that tout million-dollar value, not the individual owners, this error that affected a total of seven properties and is already being remedied by the current administration as voter roll mishap.

Because of Cronin’s independence from his party, his professional experience of going after the big guys and his specific plan of action, the Herald supports Cronin.