Spin Cycle: Making sense of Nassau finances

The political muddle has turned so thick in Nassau's latest fiscal drama that with a week left to the next takeover deadline, it might help to sum up the few clear elements now in play.

Some in County Executive Edward Mangano's camp sound, unofficially, warm to the idea of a control period by the county's fiscal monitor - as the only effective way they see to get the county out from under onerous labor contracts.

Others on Mangano's side are posturing so firmly against control that they suggest - with some risk - that the Nassau Interim Finance Authority board is politically tilted, having partnered and cooperated with predecessor Thomas Suozzi in the past. One famous name has even been privately invoked - that of a one-term New York City mayor whose elected government essentially fell into an unelected receivership.

That is, Mangano does not wish to become the county's Abe Beame.

Just before New Year's, after a potential control period was put off, the hired financial adviser, Grant Thornton Llp, issued a series of demands for information from the county on its claimed projections of labor savings, additional "contingency" measures and fund balances.

Mangano has responded in part with an outline of how securitizing leases from the Mitchel Field area, land sales, and departmental reductions would add up to an estimated $60.3 million in black ink.

The critical public presence of Conservative Party activist George Marlin on the NIFA board, meanwhile, generates insider interest of its own. One longtime regional budget wonk saw him as a zealot, philosophically opposed to accustomed political compromises. But another Nassau insider added: "He was a strong election supporter of Mangano in 2009, but seems to be legitimately fed up."

In September, for example, Marlin said: "There is no doubt that Nassau County is on the edge of a fiscal abyss here. I wonder why the county executive has not called this a fiscal emergency. . . . It looks like a fiscal emergency to me."

First-term GOP Comptroller George Maragos entered the fray taking aim at NIFA. His refinancing suggestions drew fire from Ronald A. Stack, the NIFA chairman, who called Maragos' technical points "misleading" and "not true and frankly, uninformed."

The smart political money says Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has no incentive to wade into this mess. He faces plenty of fiscal problems of his own, and has by all accounts kept cordial relations with Mangano.

Local Kremlinologists read different things into the presence of Judith Kaye, NIFA legal adviser, whom Cuomo as attorney general called in to handle some highly sensitive cases.

If NIFA moves for control, it could open a big court fight on the question of when a budget is out of balance - the legal standard for a NIFA control period. Budgets involve forecasting and assumptions, after all, which within professional limits can be very subjective.

No matter how you spin it, sacrificing elected control to an appointed board will look like a massive failure on somebody's part, at least while it is happening. That much, too, is clear.