Nassau fails to collect millions of dollars

Nassau County just booked an $80-million operating deficit for 2011, and is fighting to close a shortfall originally projected at $300 million for 2012. A cash-strapped county should be very, very focused on collecting all the money it's owed.

This one isn't.

Nassau is sitting on more than $44 million in unpaid traffic and parking tickets, more than $9 million of that from red-light camera violations, but doesn't use the tools that would make people pony up. It's also failing to collect tens of millions of dollars in sewer fees from nonprofit organizations, and the sewer fund balance is dwindling as a result.

To get violators to pay tickets, you must make them believe they'll face trouble if they refuse, something the county has failed to do.

Last year's offer to drivers with more than three tickets, promising amnesty from late fees, brought in just $186,000. Officials had hoped to realize $21.7 million, and the failure forced them to adjust revenue projections significantly for 2011 and 2012. Officials also claimed that after the amnesty ended, serial nonpayers would be booted and towed, but never managed to contract a company to do so. And Nassau has failed to get the driver's licenses of scofflaws suspended.

Now, more and more people are neglecting to pay their fines. There were about 8,000 unpaid red-light tickets in 2009, when the county installed the first cameras. There are now 107,000, and as long as there are no consequences for nonpayment, it will only get worse.

With the sewer money, it's not that the users won't pay. It's just that the county isn't organized enough to ask them to.

In October 2010, facing a large deficit in the sewer district operating fund, the Nassau County Legislature approved a one-cent per gallon sewer fee for nonprofits, excluding houses of worship and veterans halls. In theory, that would raise $38 million per year, but County Executive Edward Mangano budgeted revenue of only $19 million to be collected this year for last year's service, wisely figuring there could be bumps in the road to implementation.

But not even a penny of that $19 million will be realized this year, because the assessment didn't get done in time for the tax rolls, and the sewer budget will again have to use shrinking reserves to pay bills.

Nassau is broke, tremendously indebted, scurrying to borrow more each year and reduced to having its finances controlled by a state oversight committee. This isn't about politics, it's about competence. An administration that can't collect revenue isn't going to be able to run a county.