Nassau GOP lawmakers should want tough labor lawyer

In 2014, when Nassau County employees were stuck in a wage freeze and newly hired police officers were earning base salaries of $35,000 a year, the Police Benevolent Association had no problem welcoming the Nassau Interim Finance Authority to the negotiating table. It made sense for then-NIFA chairman Jon Kaiman to be involved, because NIFA had final approval over any deal.

NIFA still has the final say over labor contracts, because the county is in a state control period triggered by annual deficits. So NIFA still needs to be at the table, and the watchdog agency hired high-powered labor lawyer Gary Dellaverson for $25,000 a month to be there.

But now the PBA doesn’t want a NIFA representative at the table. Union president James McDermott says the attorney doesn’t belong in the room because “negotiations are between the employer and the employee, not the oversight board.”

All of the county’s unions have been out of contract since the end of 2017, and all except the PBA have begun negotiations with the county.

McDermott’s strategy makes sense coming from the PBA, which has no reason to welcome a powerful adversary. But opposition to Dellaverson’s involvement is less justifiable when it comes from the county legislature’s Republican presiding officer, Richard Nicolello.

At a legislative meeting Monday, Nicolello

Initially, the GOP-dominated county legislature refused to hire Dellaverson, the choice of Democratic County Executive Laura Curran. Nicolello argues that NIFA’s hiring of the labor lawyer thwarts the legislature’s will because the county pays NIFA’s bills. Nicolello says he is particularly bothered by Dellaverson’s flat monthly fee, for which he does not have to produce time sheets, even though that is a routine pay arrangement for a labor lawyer.

But Nassau needs a top gun like Dellaverson, known as a straight shooter even among past union adversaries. And this week’s GOP outburst continues a troubling pattern of the party chiming in on whatever gripe the PBA has, as it did with two hearings earlier this month to savage Curran and Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder over detective shortages and the assignment of police to crossing-guard duties.

The marionette strings are showing.

Nassau Republicans and law-enforcement unions have been allied for decades. Raising the specter of crime has served the GOP well with the public, and the support of the unions has boosted election campaigns.

But times have changed, and the PBA and the Nassau GOP playbook have not. Residents still love their cops, but they don’t love high taxes, or the fact that officers get as many as 70 paid days off each year and payouts in the hundreds of thousands of dollars the day they retire.

The PBA’s job is fighting for its members, but in a broke county where crime is at an all-time low, the Nassau legislature’s job is protecting the taxpayers’ pocketbooks.

— The editorial board