Jerry Laricchiuta: Nassau overspending on outside contractors

Jerry Laricchiuta, president of Nassau’s Civil Service Employee Association, complained at a county legislative budget hearing last week that Nassau County is increasing its use of expensive outside vendors to do routine work that his union members could do.

Laricchiuta at the hearing last Friday  presented a chart that showed outside contracting services had increased by $70 million since 2014 -- from $265 million then to a proposed $335 million next year.

That includes $19.8 million for outside contractual services in County Executive Laura Curran’s proposed 2019 budget.

Laricchiuta argued that county workers can do the same job for less money.

For example, he said, last Thursday , “an outside vendor was power washing the union steps.” Laricchiuta was referring to the steps leading to union offices housed in a county building in Mineola.

“That’s pretty bad,” Laricchiuta said. “We have union workers who power wash all the time.”