Long Beach City Council candidates set to debate

Candidates running for three open seats on the City Council are set to answer questions at a candidates’ forum hosted by the local League of Women Voters at the Long Beach Public Library on Oct. 29 beginning at 6:15 p.m.
Many have called this year’s council race a referendum on the city administration and leadership, particularly amid two criminal investigations into questionable separation payouts to employees — a number of them non-union staff who remained on the payroll — a scathing state audit, a fiscal crisis and two consecutive tax increases.
This year’s Democratic primary grew heated amid a rift between Long Beach Democrats, three of whom — Liz Treston, Karen McInnis and Ron Paganini — defeated incumbents Anthony Eramo and Chumi Diamond, and their running mate, Jim Mulvaney, by a wide margin in June.
Eramo, Diamond and Mulvaney are running on the Working Families Party line, though the league said that they would not attend the forum.
Nassau County Legislator Denise Ford, a Democrat who caucuses with Republicans, and her challenger, Long Beach resident Jeffrey Saxon, will also appear at the forum, according to the league.

Council President Anissa Moore, a Democrat who was first elected to a four-year term in 2015 — the first African-American elected to the council — is running on the Republican line this year alongside Long Beach resident Mike Delury, a Democrat and the treasurer of the Village of East Williston, and Republican newcomer Lauren Doddato-Goldman, a West End resident and a former Nassau County assistant district attorney who is currently the principal law clerk for Nassau County Court Judge Terence P. Murphy.
They are running on a platform of reform and pledged “to hold the line on taxes, restore fiscal responsibility, transparency, accountability and civility to Long Beach City Hall.”
“Obviously, the fiscal crisis — the payouts, and a raise in taxes for the last two years — that’s really part of the problem to start with,” Doddato-Goldman said.
Treston, a community advocate and the chairwoman of the Long Beach Community Organizations Active in Disasters; McInnis, a financial executive; and Paganini, a retired city worker and former union leader, are running as part of a group called the New Wave Dems LB on a platform of change.
They said they are running to restore “integrity, trust and stability to both the city and the local Democratic brand.”
“We’re going to give this city a fresh start,” McInnis said. “We’re cleaning the slate. We’re tired of excuses; we’re tired of problems. The city needs new blood to come in and restore transparency and accountability to the residents.”
Many residents have expressed concern about increased taxes and fees, the city’s water quality, infrastructure and quality-of-life issues such as parking, all of which the candidates pledged to address.
A state draft audit, issued in August, found that the city made $500,000 in separation payouts to 10 individuals that were inconsistent with City Code or contracts in 2017 and 2018 for unpaid sick and vacation leave — including a payment of more than $50,000 to then City Manager Jack Schnirman. Additionally, the state said that the city had failed to take corrective action for over more than decades after audits in 1992 and 1996 identified a number of instances in which the city paid employees for accumulated time that were inconsistent with the city’s code or contracts.
The audit also found that the city mismanaged funds that resulted in operating deficits totaling $8.5 million over the past four years.
The city, however, said that union and non-union employees received $3.1 million in questionable separation payments and “drawdowns” over the past decade and that attempting to recoup such funds would present significant legal challenges, which city officials claimed DiNapoli’s office overlooked and did not address in the audit.
Both sides pledged to look into recouping overpayments, and also called for changing the city’s charter and Code of Ordinances to address the city’s payout practices — as recommended in a state draft audit — and looking into switching to austerity budgets that would maintain essential services in the event that a proposed spending plan was rejected — a practice common among school districts.
“When it comes to the charter, it’s 1,000 pages … but parts of it definitely need to be updated,” Treston said.

The ‘New Wave’ Democrats
In an interview with Herald editors on Oct. 4, McInnis, Paganini and Treston said that their top priorities include addressing the city’s finances, growing the tax base, hiring a “qualified, experienced” city manager, repopulating all commissions and boards — including the long inactive ethics committee — with residents representing different parts of the community, and ending what they called a cycle of corruption.
“We have to re-establish transparency and trust and credibility in the city government — that’s a big goal — and work together as a team,” said McInnis, who added that if elected, her slate would implement recommendations made by the state comptroller. “We have to get elected, stabilize the government, find savings and make sure everything is running efficiently so that we can deliver a budget that’s actually on budget — which the previous councils have not done — and minimize any increase in taxes for the following year.”
Treston said that many residents have yet to return home after Hurricane Sandy, and said she has called on state and federal officials to implement flood insurance reforms. “People are still trying to catch up, and they don’t see themselves here in two years, three years, and that saddens me,” she said. “The [increased] taxes and … they can’t sustain the mortgage because they’ve been out of their houses for over four years and they’re been paying rent, their 401K is gone, their college kids’ funds are gone — I’m still hearing it every day.”
For his part, Paganini — a former bus dispatcher who worked for the city for 30 years and received a contractual $140,000 retirement payout in 2016, according to records obtained by the Herald — said that corruption has been rampant in the city.
“We will pick the city manager when we get in there, not the [political] leader,” he said.
Paganini added that if elected, he would attempt to recoup any overpayments to employees “with interest” and said that Schnirman, who recently returned a $52,000 overpayment, is to blame for the excessive payments.
McInnis, however, said that she had yet to see the draft audit — the final report has yet to be released — or the city’s response to the state before it was rescinded on Oct. 11.
“I would explore every single opportunity to see if we could claw back any funds and I would look at a cost-benefit relative to the legal expense of trying to get the money back,” she said. “And I would also work with the unions to see if we can come to a resolution.”

The coalition
Moore, a Nassau Community College communications professor, has long described herself as an “outsider” on the council who has, at times, been at odds with other Democrats.
Moore and her running mates said that holding the line on taxes this year was critical.
“There is no way we can continue to overtax our residents — it’s going to completely price people out of the community,” she said.
Moore, along with Councilman John Bendo, voted against a $2.1 million borrowing measure last year for separation payouts to employees that led to the state audit and investigation.
“In 2018, when we discovered that there was a serious issue in terms of the payouts, then people were like, ‘What’s going on?” she said. “2018 revealed that everything was in question.”
She said that a top priority is changing the city’s charter, particularly as it applies to separation payouts and the budget. “I’ve been waiting for four years in terms of having the ability to change the charter,” she said. “The charter, as it stands, ties the hands of a City Council member. Based on the charter, I don’t have any authority to do some of the things that really needed to take place over the past couple of years.”
She said that if re-elected, she would work to improve communication between the council, administration and residents, and called for monthly town hall meetings and partnering with civic associations.
Delury echoed that sentiment, and said that if elected, he would work to implement a number of recommendations made by the state’s Financial Restructuring Board for Local Governments in June to reduce costs, saying that separation payouts are a major driver of the city’s fiscal stress. He and his running mates also said that they want to rein in spending, implement greater overtime controls and find cost-saving efficiencies.
Delury said that they too would look at clawing back funds to both union and non-union employees who may have been overpaid, but added that those figures have yet to be determined. Moore said that she wants to hire outside legal counsel specializing in recovering such funds.
“The number that was reported was $3.1 million — that is a substantial amount,” Delury said.
“You have to claw the money back,” Doddato-Goldman said. “Figuring out the figure is the larger issue because it’s been a pervasive problem for the past 25 years. Where you’re going to start with that and where you’re going to end with that really depends on, unfortunately, what the investigation yields. But … ignorance of the law is no excuse. Just because you didn’t know that something was wrong doesn’t mean it still isn’t wrong.”