Steve Bellone saves Suffolk $300,000 in salary, benefits

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone personally will have saved the county nearly $300,000 by the end of his second term by taking salary cuts and paying a share of his health insurance, according to the county budget office late last week.

The budget office supplied the figures after county Comptroller John Kennedy, a Republican, criticized a Bellone campaign mailing and said the county executive was “doing nothing” to ease county fiscal woes.

Bellone, who came to office amid a county fiscal crisis, has taken a salary of $187,000 every year since 2012, when he was first elected. That year, he was legally entitled to a $208,800 salary, a figure that has grown to $232,124 this year under a county law that automatically provides for cost of living raises.

Bellone also has voluntarily paid a 15-percent share of health insurance, now only required of new hires, totaling another $21,703. Together with the salary savings over eight years, the savings amount to $296,389.

“If we are going to ask our hardworking county employees to do more with less, it’s important to lead by example," Bellone said. "In the end, our shared sacrifices have achieved real savings while protecting the taxpayer.”

Kennedy, who is weighing a run for county executive in November, said Bellone's “personal choices regarding salary and benefits are laudable, but his governmental missteps are lethal. He breached a contract on solar panels that cost the county nearly $13 million . . . and he incurred additional interest with recent tax anticipation notes because we are at near junk bond status. The list goes on and on.”