Mangano 'having fun' as new Nassau County executive

It's Friday evening and Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, five weeks into the job, isn't close to going home. There's supposed to be a snowstorm Saturday morning. And he's leading the charge to make sure everything goes right.

Mangano's not a flashy man. He's more of a by-the-numbers-type, which probably explains why he can be so calm in describing his first month in office, even on the eve of a major - or as it would turn out, no - storm.

"I am having fun," he said at one point.

Fun?

Already, Mangano, who ran on the tax revolt line, has had to face the fallout from a decision by fellow Republican Peter Schmitt, presiding officer of the county legislature, to give - and then rescind - raises for the body's leadership. And he was in office for just a few days when the Nassau Interim Finance Authority slapped him with a 60-day deadline to fill a multimillion-dollar hole in the county budget.

Mangano's gone to court to win the right to toss out former County Executive Thomas Suozzi's last-minute appointments to the county's assessment review commission. There's a potential fight brewing over another late-breaking decision by Suozzi to lease county-owned land to developers of the Lighthouse project.

Meanwhile, Mangano's fired 160 employees from Suozzi's administration and staffed his own administration in short order because a recount after his close election robbed Mangano of the usual one-month transition time.

"This job is exactly what I envisioned it would be," said Mangano, who served 14 years as a county lawmaker. "It's like you go from being a passenger to being the driver."

It's a good metaphor because Mangano's got a tough road ahead. One of his key challenges will be to move beyond his instinctively low-key nature to become a bold leader, unafraid to use his bully pulpit when necessary. On the Schmitt raises, for example, it would have been bold to stand up and say, on Day One, that now is not the time to take such a raise.

"What we are doing is identifying, organizing and prioritizing what needs to be done," he said.

Mangano said he has found, among other things, a bloated bureaucracy, a parks system in disrepair and a variety of county buildings left abandoned or in mid-construction.

Mangano has slimmed down the bureaucracy by having several commissioners report directly him. And he is putting together plans to address other issues - including a proposal to ramp up arrests of heroin dealers - and to reduce county costs. He is working with Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy on plans to share costs and resources on a new juvenile detention center; and with Levy and Westchester County Executive Robert Astorino on banding together to seek federal funding for sewers and other infrastructure costs.

But Job One, Mangano said, is fixing assessment, a system he has repeatedly criticized as a legislator. Which is directly related to Job Two, stabilizing the county's long-term finances. On Friday, he met with former NIFA chairman Frank Zarb, who nine years ago identified the county's practice of bonding property tax challenge refunds as the major structural pull on Nassau's finances. Back then, Nassau received millions of dollars in state money to fix the system. This time around, Mangano will receive no such help.

"It's still going to get done," he said, noting that bonding tax certs certificates cost the county $150 million in debt service - about 10 cents of every tax dollar - a year. "It's going to get done right."

One idea he's considering is moving from annual reassessment to what he called a "cyclical" one: The assessment roll would be set and corrected over a period of time for one cycle; and then set and corrected over a period of time a few years later for the next, and so on.

The idea, Mangano said, is to thoroughly correct the commercial and residential assessment rolls that the number of successful challenges would begin to die off.

As for property taxes, Mangano said, he's already made good on a campaign promise to give Nassau residents relief - by eliminating an energy tax that would have been equal to a 4.9 percent increase in property taxes. Of course, that blew a hole in an already fragile budget.

"There is a lot more that is going to have to be done to address taxes," he said. Among his ideas: Create more "green jobs" and push to finally get video lottery terminals at Belmont racetrack.

And what of the political divide that - unlike Suffolk - always seems to plague Nassau?

"I hope that we can build some consensus," Mangano said. "That's what I've asked both sides for. Let's see where it goes."

PHOTOS: Click here to see photos of Ed Mangano on the job