Time for pols to do the right thing on raises

Give Riverhead Town's newly elected supervisor a hand.

He's got the right idea for digging in to lead by example during these hard economic times.

Not only did the town forgo any raises this year for its town board members, supervisor and department heads, Supervisor Sean M. Walter took the notion of "shared sacrifice" even further.

If department heads want a raise in the next two years - absent a miraculous economic recovery, that is - they'll have to stand and justify the request publicly before the town board, he said Wednesday.

And Walter didn't stop there: He also agreed to voluntarily reimburse the town 25 percent of his no-contribution health care coverage. That's right, voluntarily.

"It's not pretty out there for anybody in this recession and you have to lead by example," Walter said in an interview.

"Our major focus is going to be jobs, jobs and even more jobs, because we have to put our neighbors back to work," he said.

Walter's stance on his health care premium sets him apart from the top elected officials of every other town and city whom I talked to Wednesday.

Still, many of them had the right idea about freezing salaries.

Officials from the towns of Huntington, Islip, North Hempstead, Brookhaven, Riverhead, East Hampton, Shelter Island, Smithtown and Southampton and the cities of Glen Cove and Long Beach said they froze salaries of elected officials this year.

"I've had to lay people off," said Phil Nolan, Islip Town supervisor, who has not had a raise since he took office. "There's no way to raise salaries of elected officials when you've had to lay people off."

In Huntington, elected officials were supposed to receive an automatic cost-of-living increase.

"We took a look at what was happening and froze salaries for elected and appointed positions," said Supervisor Frank Petrone. The town also imposed a hiring freeze.

Giving themselves raises is what sets officials in the towns of Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Babylon apart from the rest. The raises they adopted are hanging out there - alone.

Mike Deery, a spokesman for the Town of Hempstead, which hiked salaries of elected and appointed officials, put up a good fight supporting the raises. (Deery got a raise to $165,395, by the way). The raises, which he said were in line with union contract employee raises, including merit, brought him and two other appointed town officials to salaries higher than the town supervisor, Kate Murray.

The town runs well, he said.

The elected officials work especially hard, he said.

The town's budget is the best it's been in years, he said.

The same arguments could be made for Oyster Bay and Babylon. But such arguments don't - and shouldn't - work these days. Not when the unemployment rate on Long Island is 7 percent - 7 percent in Hempstead; 6.1 percent in Oyster Bay; and 7.8 percent in Babylon - according to December figures from the state labor department.

And not when eight Long Islanders begin the foreclosure process for every 10 houses sold, according to fourth-quarter figures from the Long Island Real Estate Report in East Islip.

Those same figures show that 1.10 homes began the foreclosure process - called lis pendens - for every one sold in Babylon. For Hempstead, the ratio was 0.80 to 1; and for Oyster Bay, it was 0.43 to 1.

Do the math. And then translate those numbers into the local families taking brutal economic hits of a sort most of us have never encountered in our lifetimes.

It's essential that the leaders of every taxing entity on Long Island - from school district superintendents to garbage district supervisors - step up and lead by example. Yes, that means taking some share of the pain.

To Hempstead, Oyster Bay and Babylon officials, the message is simple: Give back those raises.

It doesn't take a genius to know that Long Islanders can't - and shouldn't have to - keep digging deeper and deeper into shallow pockets.