Levy woes offer lawmakers opportunities

The political hobbling of Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy opens up new avenues for local lawmakers.

For the first time since the legislature's founding in 1969, there will be no county executive to push legislators into action. And none to block them from doing pretty much whatever they want.

Levy has yet to return to Hauppauge, although a spokesman for his office said that he is making calls to department heads. "It would be a mistake to think that he is detached at all," said spokesman Dan Aug.

No one would say whether he's on Long Island or whether his calls are coming from elsewhere. But even when -- if? -- Levy returns, and he comes back to work, he's a hobbled duck.

"He's lost the power to even try to bend the legislature to his will," said Stanley B. Klein, a professor at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University and a GOP committeeman from Dix Hills. "The only one looking to him for anything will be the man staring back in the mirror."

In Suffolk, the legislature stands on equal footing with the executive -- unlike in Nassau County, where the charter grants an unusual degree of power to the executive.

Through the years, Suffolk's Legislature, for the most part, has remained stubbornly independent. It fights the executive; the legislators fight each other, although for a short period -- before Levy assumed office -- a bipartisan coalition reigned.

Since Levy switched parties, going from Democrat to Republican, the legislature appeared to begin moving toward more voting by political blocks, according to some observers.

That's not a good thing. The Nassau County Legislature has block-voted almost exclusively under both Republican and Democratic executives.

It got to the point -- with rare, welcome exceptions -- that the legislature functioned as an adjunct to the executive rather than a separate branch of government.

William Lindsay, presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature, said Monday that so far the nuts and bolts of county government are functioning just fine in Levy's absence.

He said he did not see a problem with Levy being gone for a short period, but if he's gone for more than a week, there will be an impact.

"Steve is intimately involved in every aspect of what goes on in the executive," Lindsay said, noting that Levy also listens in on every full meeting of the legislature, as well as the committee sessions.

Levy may come back ready to fight for his budget and the sale of the county nursing home. He may also work to champion one of his pet projects, a housing development in Yaphank.

But he will face a legislature that increasingly can ignore him and override any veto he deigns to make. Levy's final months in office could echo those of former Gov. David A. Paterson. That was awful to watch.

Or those of former Nassau County Executive Thomas Gulotta, who was politically attacked by both parties a decade ago as the county's Wall Street bond ratings began to tank.

At that time, the Nassau Legislature came to the county's rescue, as Republicans and Democrats pulled together to work with the Nassau Interim Finance Authority to pull the county back from the brink of fiscal insolvency.

What will Suffolk's Legislature do? Lindsay says it will deal with the budget and keep pushing and passing its own initiatives. Yes, and legislators are likely to do it free of Levy's heavy-handed fighting style and attempts at micromanaging.

Klein believes the legislature can rise above just fighting Levy and accomplish even more.

"They will have the freedom, for the first time in the institution's history, to work together, identify important policies and pretty much do anything they want," Klein said.