Mangano plays a high-stakes game

Desmond Ryan is the executive director of the developers group the Association for a Better Long Island.

In the wake of NIFA's takeover of county finances, Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano has to reshuffle the deck and stop playing the same hand. The Nassau Interim Finance Authority and the civil service unions are much better poker players than he is, and only a genuine display of political will and leadership is going to change the game.

There are more questions than answers about what happens next to county finances, given that no New York county as wealthy as Nassau has ever fallen so far from fiscal grace. For starters, will Mangano really pursue a lawsuit to block the NIFA takeover, claiming his books were balanced and NIFA's actions were punitive and political? If so, that lawsuit will only distance Mangano from the eventual resolution he will be forced to sign.

Consider: If Mangano goes to court as he vows, his administration cuts off any opportunity to create problem-solving dialogue with the unions and NIFA. A courtroom battle precludes any strategy of compromise and puts the timetable for eventual resolution into the hands of the lawyers. It distorts the timing for further union negotiations, leaves the county legislature wondering who is the recognized financial authority, and compels the county to produce every financial document - every internal budget analysis, and every memo - regarding how it got into this mess.

Rather than launching an angry lawsuit, Mangano needs to practice a Mineola version of "realpolitik," where politics is based on good, old-fashioned pragmatism. He should begin face-to-face discussions that honestly acknowledge the depth of the crisis. Like the problem drinker long in denial now standing up in a rehab meeting, the administration should spend the next week working with NIFA to produce a candid, honest and accurate analysis of just where the problems are.

The county's municipal unions will posture and pout, threaten and bully, but at the end of the day they know they are going to have to engage in serious compromise or risk poisoning their own well.

Those honest talks would create the environment for resolving the crisis and dismissing the financial control takeover in the shortest possible period of time. But they have to be real. No more press releases packaged as "victories," which are long on rhetoric and short on budget metrics.

And the negotiating group should be kept small and focused. Rely on what remains a most effective - though often parodied - political tactic, "the three men in a room," where key principals sit down behind closed doors and negotiate as honest equals who cut through the public posturing and political rhetoric to get to a deal.

But make no mistake: That deal will be difficult for everyone, as it will probably include tax increases and union benefit givebacks.

It is humiliating for Mangano to lose control of his primary responsibility of managing the county's books. That's probably why his first reaction is, "I'll sue." But if he is adept, the county executive could easily limit his political damage and assume the role of statesman.

He needs to avoid the obvious finger-pointing, as it would be so easy to suggest that his predecessor, Tom Suozzi, made cynical quick fixes in the budget, leaving him with books so cooked they could have been served as an entrée. Rather, Mangano should use this intervention to reinvent how Nassau County conducts its business, in a manner unprecedented since the 1930s - when some of the now-costly practices in the county charter were made into law.

Mangano can leverage this fiscal takeover as an opportunity for strategic reform. But first, he has to stop playing poker. The hands have been called and he has precious few chips left.