Layoff deal says a lot about Nassau County

The last meeting of the Nassau County Legislature this week revealed the inner workings of a cash-strapped government nearing the end of its first year under a state control board.

It wasn't pretty.

To control expenses, the county must lay off employees.

Lawmakers agreed Monday to spend millions of additional dollars to make that happen, in part by voting to lift the payout cap on banked vacation days.

The cap was 200 days.

The legislature also approved 10 of 12 other proposed contracts, for work that union leaders say is done by members who are slated to be laid off.

The wrinkle here?

The county would cut operating expenses while increasing borrowing to put contractors on call for traffic engineering, construction management and landscape work.

"My kids will be paying for planting flowers right now," Jerry Laricchiuta, head of the county Civil Service Employees Association, told a Newsday reporter after the meeting.

The legislature also approved $6.8 million -- more than three times the amount budgeted -- for outside legal work in the county attorney's office.

The rub here is that the work was completed before the contracts went to lawmakers for approval.

And the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the state control board, has yet to see most of the contracts.

Republican lawmakers were so incensed that they proposed a law to force County Attorney John Ciampoli to do what he was supposed to do in the first place: Get legislative approval for the work in a reasonable amount of time.

But that effort got lost amid Democratic lawmakers' fight for a "transparent" process in -- of all things -- redrawing legislative district lines.

That move led to an hours-long delay in restarting the meeting after a recess.

While lawmakers cooled their heels, Democrat Kevan Abrahams, the incoming minority leader, was upstairs in County Executive Edward Mangano's office, working on a trade.

Democrats would support $17 million in borrowing -- for the voluntary retirement incentive program -- if Mangano agreed to a "transparent" redistricting process.

What's odd is that Mangano, according to the charter, has nothing to do with redistricting. That matter rests with the legislature and Peter Schmitt, the presiding officer, who was downstairs, angry at the delay.

What makes things odder is that Schmitt did not know about the redistricting part of the trade until he read it in Newsday -- the next day.

On a positive note, lawmakers balked at the $102 million in property tax refund settlements that were dropped on them days before the last meeting of the year.

Traditionally, settlements over $100,000 need legislative approval, but not a single proposed settlement went to the legislature -- until a stack was dumped on them at the last meeting of the year.

The stack, wisely, was never formally put before lawmakers for action. Lawmakers in the cash-strapped county will consider it anew in 2012.

Which means that Nassau, under a state control board, will begin the new year much as it ended the old.