Nassau County needs more, not less, contract transparency

Last Monday, Madeline Singas, Nassau’s district attorney, stood before county lawmakers, urging them to make Nassau’s contract process more resistant to corruption. Part of the solution, Singas said, was using technology.

“Without modern technology to catalog and cross-check, any contract can appear legitimate on its face,” Singas said.

“What we must be looking for . . . [are] pre-existing relationships — financial or personal — which go undetected and are then exploited at the expense of fiduciary duty, the taxpayer, and the public’s trust as a whole,” she said.

Then came Wednesday, and with it, Newsday reporter Celeste Hadrick’s discovery that Nassau’s legislature had stopped posting contracts online — and removed contract postings dating back to late last summer.

There was no public announcement of the information cutoff, and officials can’t say when — or how much — contracting information will be restored.

The decision to stop posting and to remove already posted contracts came from the legislature at the behest of County Attorney Carnell Foskey, said Frank Moroney, a spokesman for presiding officer Norma Gonsalves (R-East Meadow).

Moroney said lawmakers sought Foskey’s advice after receiving two complaints from vendors that personal information, such as Social Security numbers, had been posted online.

Foskey said in a statement Friday: “This was a temporary step to balance the right of the public to know, and to an individual’s rights to privacy.” The statement added that, “Posting and information disseminated will be consistent with the current [Freedom of Information] . . . laws.”

Social Security numbers do not belong online. But the evolving explanations of how the county would handle online dissemination of contract information in the future were worrisome.

There was discussion of whether the legislature should link to county Comptroller George Maragos’s website, which names vendors and contract amounts — bare-bones information compared to the contracts, and backup information, that the legislature took down.

There also was discussion about whether the public, after selecting from an online summary, would be required to file Freedom of Information Law requests to see full contract information. That actually could become a barrier, as Nassau is known for running the clock on FOIL requests.

Back when Nassau had a board of supervisors, its legislative calendar listed contracts, what they were for and how much they cost. But that changed in 1996, when the county legislature replaced the board under a federal decree. Since then, legislative calendars have included vendor names — and nothing else.

And if lawmakers don’t ask the right questions or press for specific answers, contract details don’t come out at public meetings of the Rules Committee.

Yes, as officials pointed out last week, detailed contract information would remain available from the clerk of the legislature’s office. But why should the public, in this day and age, be bound by government office hours? Suffolk County has a searchable database of vendors, and posts information on some pending contracts online before legislative meetings.

When will Nassau’s contracts go back online, and in what form? That, alas, remains to be seen.