Letters: What’s true compensation for Nassau legislators?

The Nassau County legislature in session on Sunday, Oct. 30, 2011, in Mineola. Credit: Howard Schnapp
In “Pols vote for raise” [News, Dec. 8], salaries were given for Nassau County legislators.
To help readers understand the true amount of legislators’ compensation, it would be necessary to add benefits, expense accounts, the value of staff and other benefits.
It would be nice to know the true escalation in the cost of the legislature to taxpayers since it was seated in 1996. Also relevant might be the taxpayer-paid imprisonment, for example, of disgraced lawmakers David Denenberg, Roger Corbin and others.
Leone Baum, Hempstead
Editor’s note: The writer was executive assistant to the vice chairman of the commission that revised the county charter to disband the Nassau board of supervisors.
I find “Pols vote for raise” [News, Dec. 8], regarding the Nassau County Legislature’s proposed 90 percent salary increase, obscene and unwarranted. It’s an insult to every taxpayer. I thought Nassau County was broke. How are these huge raises justified in our economy? This is well above any cost-of-living or merit increase I’ve ever heard of in private industry.
William Devlin, Rockville Centre