Ex-Hempstead mayor gets county post

Nassau Comptroller George Maragos has appointed former Hempstead Village Mayor James Garner as a deputy comptroller making $110,000 a year.

Maragos said fellow Republican Garner, who starts Monday, "brings extraordinary qualifications" to the job, having served 16 years as mayor and chief financial officer of the largest village in New York. "His prior public service and fiscal management experience will serve our county well," Maragos said in a statement.

Democratic critics complain that Garner left the village with a $6.5 million deficit and a bond rating one notch above junk.

"If the qualifications are for helping to run the county further into the ground, James Garner's resume from the Village of Hempstead seems to qualify in that regard," said Nassau Legis. Wayne Wink (D-Roslyn).

Garner and Maragos declined to comment on Wink's statement.

Garner was appointed in 1984 to a vacancy on the Hempstead village board and later won election to the post. He was elected Hempstead Village mayor in 1989 and won re-election until 2005, when he was defeated by Democrat Wayne Hall.

A state audit requested by Hall in 2006 found that except for the year 2000, the village had run a budget deficit every year since 1997 because of "poor budgeting and overestimating revenues," a representative for then-state Comptroller Alan Hevesi said at the time.

Garner, 65, was the first African-American elected mayor on Long Island. He also was the first black Republican mayor to serve as president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, in 2004. Garner founded a family-run pest exterminating business in Hempstead.