Mangano can take a bold step

There is still enough time on the clock for Edward Mangano to execute a winning play for Nassau County. He needs to make a daring move, a shift not in the playbook of his partisan coaches but one that will mark him as a leader.

This week the county executive should invite the Nassau Interim Finance Authority to declare a control period and work with him to soundly balance the budget for this year and next.

Otherwise, county taxpayers will be the big losers.

As a legislator, Mangano voted for the creation of NIFA in 2000 when Republicans were in charge of Nassau. It was the GOP that kept NIFA alive when it was set to expire in 2007. During Mangano's 2009 campaign for county executive, he brandished copies of NIFA reports, highlighted in yellow, that were critical of his Democrat predecessor, Thomas Suozzi.

During the past few months, Mangano repeatedly asked for more time to get the county's house in order, but he was never able to get the $60 million in concessions he said were needed from the county's public employee unions. Those unions, if they are to make any givebacks, won't do it without NIFA as part of the process. The unions want to give only once, and dealing directly with NIFA gives them that protection.

Since the unions turned him down, Mangano has maintained that his budget is balanced while at the same time grasping at ways to close the gap or distract attention from it. At one point he pitched a minor-league baseball stadium; next he proposed a hike in the sales tax. Now he is trying to sell the leases for county property at Mitchel Field, ready to take $30 million up front for rents worth $108 million over time. Technically, one-shot deals like this may keep him out of a deficit, but those are disastrous policy choices.

Mangano seems to be under the spell of Republican partisans who fear that NIFA's arrival, invited or otherwise, could cost them control of the legislature in this fall's election. That's the kind of irresponsible, party-first thinking that sent the Nassau GOP into the wilderness for a decade.

Working with NIFA in a cooperative effort would make any control period shorter and more effective. Mangano could ask NIFA to focus on the labor agreements, with a goal to exit the control period by the end of this year. By then there would be a solid 2012 budget in place. Such a defined role for NIFA lets it focus on the numbers and Mangano could run the government.

Unfortunately, Mangano is threatening a constitutional challenge to NIFA's authority. It's a weak legal argument and in such a fight, Nassau taxpayers will be on the hook for the legal fees of both sides - hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the uncertainty is already costing taxpayers. Short-term borrowing rates for the county rose last week and analysts say it will only get worse if the control board issue remains unresolved.

So the real question this week is not what NIFA will do but whether Mangano can do what needs to be done. hN