By John C. O'Connell
The plan, which must be approved by NIFA and at least 10 of the 19 legislators, calls for $300 million in workforce reductions, efficiencies and initiatives, labor concessions, debt restructuring, and $120 million in revenue increases. The state legislature and governor must approve segments of the plan.
Suozzi will seek $100 million in savings from workforce reductions through attrition and retirements. Layoffs would come if these were insufficient to meet the goal. He plans to reduce the current workforce of 9,500 by 1,200 jobs.
Nonetheless, the county executive said he's against layoffs for two reasons. One, he doesn't think layoffs are good for morale. Two, under the Gulotta administration, employees had a portion of their wages withheld as a cost-savings measure, payable as they left the county payroll. Layoffs would trigger the "payroll lag," meaning the county would have to pay millions in wages on termination.
He won't just cut and then try to make do with fewer workers, Suozzi said. The county will reevaluate and then revise operating methods in view of a smaller workforce.
The Police Department will be the source of some of those reductions. Suozzi said the county would have about 300 fewer uniformed positions, with civilians doing some of the work now done by police officers in jobs for which the power to arrest is not needed.
Efficiencies and initiatives would account for a planned $80 million in savings. These include performance evaluations, information technology implementation, building consolidations and bringing work in-house wherever possible.
The plan calls for $65 million in labor concessions Suozzi hopes he'll get. These savings would include $40 million from the police unions and $25 million from the Civil Service Employees Association.
Debt restructuring would save $60 million, and Suozzi needs state legislation to accomplish this. The restructuring would involve refinancing of the tax certiorari debt, borrowing less money for capital projects and creation of a Sewage and Stormwater Authority to consolidate the many sewer districts and to flatten out the repayment schedule for debt incurred to finance sewers. The legislature in Albany would have to permit this.
On the revenue side, Suozzi proposes a 19.4 percent property tax increase on the county portion of the property tax bill. The county portion is 19 percent of a person's total tax bill. (Sixty percent goes to school districts and 21 percent to towns and special districts.). A 20 percent increase in the county's portion of the tax levy will result in roughly a four-percent increase in the total property tax on most homes.
The average property owner could see a $226 increase in their tax. This increase, Suozzi said, will be dedicated to paying off the $1 billion in tax certiorari debt. The tax increase would start in 2003.
