Levy promises $2.7B budget, no tax hikes

Three days before his final budget is due, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy said Tuesday that he will present a $2.7 billion spending package with no tax increases, but warned of hundreds of layoffs without union concessions.

Levy, who is not running for re-election, repeated his months-long mantra of no new taxes and union concessions in a speech to 600 people at the Hauppauge Industrial Association's annual business awards luncheon at Crest Hollow Country Club in Woodbury.

In an interview with Newsday, Levy also repeated his warning of "several hundred" layoffs if county unions do not agree to have workers begin to pay at least 10 percent of their health insurance premiums. Currently, county workers make no contribution.

Levy said he made "across-the-board cuts" in other parts of the budget but criticized unions for blocking his attempts to bring about "rational" government.

"There will be layoffs if they don't agree" to health care concessions, he said. "The unions say we should raise taxes, which we will not do."

Levy sent letters to the union leaders last spring and over the summer, warning that there could be as many as 500 layoffs if labor does not agree to concessions.

Levy acknowledged that the unions have not responded to his request for meetings on the issue. Last month, however, the president of the Police Benevolent Association questioned Levy's commitment to talks, noting that the county executive had offered only two dates before the end of the year.

The president of the largest county union, Cheryl Felice of the 6,500-member Association of Municipal Employees, did not return calls for comment Tuesday.

County unions in the past four years deferred a total of two weeks of pay, saving the county nearly $30 million, and provided $15 million in health concessions.

The county is facing a two-year budget gap of up to $179 million. Levy and the county legislature still will have to deal with a number of unsettled issues, including the fate of the county nursing home; the impending sale on surplus county land in Yaphank, once slated to be a 1,200-unit affordable housing complex, as well as a shortfall in red-light camera revenue and the controversial use of sewer stabilization money.