Ten years ago, an earthquake shook Long Island politics: Republicans lost control of the Nassau County Legislature. Two years later, Democrat Tom Suozzi won the county executive seat.
Last month, another political earthquake swept the GOP back into power — surprising most everyone, Republicans included. But to maintain their new power, Nassau Republicans must make a positive, substantive difference for overburdened taxpayers.
It took a while to tally up the votes in close races, but the outcome was impressive for the GOP. County Legislator Edward Mangano upset County Executive Suozzi by less than 400 votes. The Democratic county comptroller, Howard Weitzman, fell to George Maragos, while Joseph Belesi unseated County Legislator David Mejias, the Democrat, by less than 200 votes. The GOP now holds an 11-8 majority in the county Legislature.
But Republicans shouldn’t get too excited: As is usually the case with such earthquakes, the people were voting against those in power, not for the challengers.
Nassau Republicans still have to prove themselves by learning from their past mistakes.
Before GOP lawmakers got the boot in 1999, they made a mess of county finances. Just a few days before that election, they raised property taxes by 10.5 percent and imposed a 1 percent tax on real-estate sales.
Mangano & Co. also must show they differ from Suozzi — who talked a good game on taxes. While garnering attention heading up the New York State Property Tax Relief Commission, which called for a school-property-tax cap, Suozzi’s track record in terms of taxes he actually had control over was dismal.
During his first year as county executive, he raised property taxes by 19.4 percent. He did the same before, as Glen Cove mayor, raising property taxes by 29 percent.
In short, the new team needs to deliver results.
During the campaign, Mangano pushed three bread-and-butter issues. First, he promised to reduce (highly paid) patronage appointments. That would be refreshing, but we’ve heard it before. There must be clear action on reducing the size of government, including slashing jobs and salaries — patronage or civil service — given that nearly half of county spending goes to wages, salaries and fringe benefits. Particular focus must be on Nassau’s highly paid police. Privatization opportunities also exist, such as the county’s aquatic center, two marinas and seven golf courses.
Second, he called for freezing all property assessments and fixing an assessment system that now has the county borrowing hundreds of millions of dollars to settle tax grievances. Again, the proof will be in the doing.
Third, Mangano promised to repeal the 2.5 percent home-energy tax imposed by Suozzi and Democratic legislators this year. Interestingly, the lame-duck Democratic-led legislature is moving toward repealing the tax in its last meeting, on Dec. 21. Even so, Mangano deserves the credit for pushing repeal.
This agenda is only a start. The assessment system, for one, wouldn’t trigger as many tax challenges if taxes weren’t so high.
Republicans need to think much bigger if they are going to make changes that produce real benefits for Nassau taxpayers — not to mention proving that the party is different from the Democrats. After all, a key reason why Republicans have lost ground on Long Island and across the state is that they’ve become too much like Democrats on fundamental issues like taxes, regulation and government spending.
Nassau Republicans need to implement institutional safeguards that protect taxpayers. For example, while Suozzi talked about a school-property-tax cap, why didn’t he make it a reality for the county portion of property taxes? Sure, he had no power to do anything about school taxes — but he did on county taxes. A hard, comprehensive county property-tax cap would be leading by example.
Even better would be a county Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights featuring a vote by residents on any tax or fee increases or on new taxes or fees. This kind of check-and-balance would force tough decisions on spending and make a real difference for taxpayers.
For too long on Long Island, both parties have been looking out for the special interests, rather than the taxpayers. Do Mangano and his fellow Republicans have the vision and courage to make a real difference?
If not, they’ll get booted out of office, and then, having failed twice, the Nassau GOP might not get another chance.
Raymond J. Keating, a Long Is land-based economist, is a columnist with Long Island Business News.