Bellone strategizing, and time's a-ticking

Meet with outgoing Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy. Check.

Name transition team co-chairs. Check.

Make budget, economy, policing and inclusiveness in government top priorities. Check, check, check and check.

Steve Bellone -- no more a candidate but not yet Suffolk's county executive -- has no choice but to get up to speed.

He's been cautious since winning the election, giving only the broadest of indications of what he intends to do in office. But over the past week, Bellone seems to have offered a few hints of how he would like to govern.

For one, look to Bellone's transition team co-chairs. Both, like Bellone, are Democrats -- no surprise there -- who have trumped adversity, a skill Bellone himself could find valuable in the hard days of layoffs and growing budget deficits ahead.

Regina Calcaterra, of Southold, is a lawyer who came up in foster homes and homeless shelters, seeking emancipation at age 14 so she could stay put and finish high school.

Antonio Martinez, of Wheatley Heights, fled the civil war in El Salvador with his family at the age of 13. He was appointed by then-Supervisor Bellone to the Babylon Town Board and later won election to the seat.

Bellone, perhaps channeling former Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi in his first term, is also seeking ideas from county residents.

Go to stevebellone.com, Bellone's old campaign website -- now re-branded "Suffolk County Works for You" -- and there are links for residents to offer up ideas and sign up for transition updates.

The website also allows residents to submit resumes -- in a county where government will have to be re-imagined, and resources dramatically realigned if Bellone is to steer past the six-month, minimum-county-employee-layoff budget left for him by the legislature. In short, there are likely to be lots of resumes for precious few jobs.

And then, there are forums, with Bellone this time around channeling former Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's "listening tours."

Next week, Bellone is slated to meet with business leaders in business-heavy Melville one day. The next, Bellone -- fulfilling a campaign promise -- is slated to meet with representatives of black, Latino and immigrant communities in Brentwood.

And there are supposed to be another four or so meetings coming in the next few weeks. It all sounds good. And transparent. Which are always good things, especially in government these days.

But Bellone's smart enough to know he's in a feel-good, honeymoon period -- an extended election victory lap.

Call it pre-governing.

Come Jan. 1, however, Bellone's going to need a plan for governing. Period.

Actually, several plans. Along with professionals who can help him make sense of the budget and a host of other crises he will confront from day one.

Former County Executive Peter Cohalan, for example, took office after the Suffolk sewer scandals decades ago, when the county also was fiscally in the dumps.

He came in guns -- figuratively, of course -- a-blazing. Firing here, hiring there, acting quickly and decisively to beat back a bad situation.

Bellone's got tough tasks ahead, too. And only weeks to fashion substantive ways of beginning to address them.

Is there a plan for, say, getting New York State -- and fellow Democrat Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who campaigned for Bellone -- to waive mandated items such as Suffolk's paying the cost for expensive out-of-county community college tuition?

Or a plan for getting the state to lighten up on mandates that significantly increase costs related to housing inmates in the county jail?

What are Bellone's bargaining parameters for negotiations with county labor unions -- which stopped talks with Levy to wait for the new county executive?

Haven't heard much from Bellone. Yet. But that's because transition time is always a nice time. It's what comes afterward that's tough.