Brown: Re-slicing Nassau's police precinct pie

The Nassau County Legislature giveth -- and taketh away.

That's essential to remember when considering the ongoing controversy over a plan to shrink the number of police precincts serving Nassau.

Yesterday, the subject of public safety pulled a crowd to a morning legislative hearing on County Executive Edward Mangano's proposed 2012 budget.

There, Thomas Krumpter, the acting police commissioner, for the first time explained the thinking behind Mangano's proposal to save money by cutting the county's eight precincts to six. The existing precinct map was created in 1972.

The screens above the hearing room glowed with a series of exhibits that seemed to show the possibility of sectioning the county into six parts, each with an almost equal amount of police work.

But Krumpter, under questioning from Republican legislators, acknowledged that it was likely impossible to have what appeared to be so clean and so equal a work distribution.

He went on to acknowledge that in places including New York City it is not uncommon for different precincts to have different workloads -- and that he knew of no police departments that successfully had divided work as evenly as the department's presentation appeared to do.

Presiding Officer Peter Schmitt -- as is his habit -- pounced.

The legislature, not the police department, will determine the lines, Schmitt (R-Massapequa) said in questioning why Krumpter and Mangano would even bother to come up with a plan without talking to legislative leaders. The lack of consultation could lead "to the very real possibility that there will be trouble," Schmitt said.

Krumpter acknowledged repeatedly -- as he told a Newsday reporter this week -- the department would need legislative approval. Krumpter went on to say the proposal was still in the planning stages, and likely would not go into effect until well into 2012.

That, in a nutshell, is one problem with Mangano's 2012 proposal. It anticipates significant savings from union concessions and other actions that, like closing precincts, are not entirely under his administration's control.

At one point, Legis. Richard Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park), asked Krumpter whether the department had a backup plan should its anticipated savings fail to come through. "That would be an appropriate question for Deputy County Executive [Tim] Sullivan," Krumpter replied. But the very capable Sullivan is in charge of budget matters, not public safety.

As it is, the county, which has a state control board looking over its shoulder, may not have enough cash on hand to cover payroll come December. That crisis, should it come, would be long past Election Day, when Republicans are looking to maintain their legislative majority.