Mangano gets OK to hire outside law firms

The Republican-dominated Rules Committee of the Nassau County Legislature gave final approval Monday to two contracts with outside law firms that Republican County Executive Edward Mangano had proposed.

Minority Democrats voted against both contracts, worth a total of $550,000, arguing that the work should be done by in-house county lawyers, and that approval sent the wrong signal to a fiscal watchdog agency, the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority, which could take control of the county's finances.

Two other contracts were put on hold by the committee.

The panel approved a contract for $300,000 with Mangano's former law firm, Rivkin Radler of Uniondale, to work on a tax appeals case, and $250,000 for a Garden City firm - Wilson Elser Moskowitz Edelman & Dicker - to work on election litigation.

The committee tabled a proposed contract with Rivkin Radler for $175,000 to provide advice on redeveloping the Coliseum site. A spokeswoman for the presiding officer, Legis. Peter Schmitt (R-Massapequa), said the legislature wanted more details from the administration.

The panel also withheld final action on a $250,000 contract with a Manhattan firm, Lewis & Fiore, to help defend the county against a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit.

Democrats on Monday were critical of all the contracts. "We are just days away from a decision regarding a state takeover of Nassau County finances," Legis. Diane Yatauro of Glen Cove, the Democratic minority leader, said at a news conference before the committee meeting.

"This is not proper fiscal management. This is the Mangano administration providing huge financial giveaways to its friends and politically connected firms," she said.

Mangano later released a statement to say he was "cleaning up the $343 million deficit created by Diane Yatauro and her Democrat colleagues. Rather than play politics, Legislator Yatauro should recognize that these firms were hired to protect taxpayers wallets."

One of the civic activists joining Yatauro at the news conference, Patricia Freedman, forced the legislature to table the Lewis & Fiore contract when she noted in her testimony that the firm had checked a box on its paperwork indicating it had been found by a court or government agency to have violated wage or labor laws in the past five years.