Nassau PBA has a fresh hand of cards

Daily Point

Blakeman’s laborious challenge

Neither the Nassau County CSEA or PBA, both of which have been working without contracts for nearly four years, endorsed a candidate in last Tuesday’s county executive race.

But the CSEA did run a campaign throughout October chastising Democratic County Executive Laura Curran for sending out $375 checks to most county households even as the union fights for its contract. Comp time for workers who had to report during COVID and disputed longevity pay are also places union leaders argue the money could be better spent.

And the PBA has often chastised Curran in the past.

Now, with Curran the anticipated loser pending a count of mail-in absentee ballots, players say the situation has changed so dramatically that it’s impossible to know what will happen next.

Blakeman doesn’t owe either union anything, but could make some very valuable friends with generous deals. The county, after years of financial struggles, is at least momentarily flush with federal stimulus and sales tax revenue. And, at least in the out-years of the contracts, one justification for decent raises has emerged: The inflation rate that was minimal for so long is running over 5% at the moment.

The Curran administration and the CSEA leaders never came up with a deal. The PBA did, but the members voted it down last December, putting the leadership in the difficult position of demanding from the county a better contract than the one PBA leadership already agreed was fair.

Labor experts on every side of the issue say a changing atmosphere can make it hard to come to a deal when a union has been out of contract. The PBA (and CSEA) deal was expected to follow the pattern established by recent agreements inked with the detectives and superior officers. With inflation surging, the PBA and CSEA will want more lucrative deals than the pattern provides, and the county will fight back.

And there is a further complication: The contracts with the superior officers and detectives include "reopener" clauses that entitle them to whatever the PBA gets, if it exceeds their deals.

Now about that PBA leadership……

The rejection of the PBA vote contributed to the resignation of former PBA president James McDermott, who left in September. Union bylaws demanded that one special election be held in September, which Mike Spadaccini won.

But weeks later the regular election for a four-year term began. It will end on Nov. 18, and insiders say Spadaccini may well lose to Tommy Shevlin, potentially giving the PBA its third president in four months.

Blakeman could stand pat, with both the PBA and the CSEA, knowing the pattern of recent deals with other unions leaves him in a very good fiscal position if the PBA wants to go to mandatory arbitration. In that process, the union only gets a two-year contract, and the first two years of all the comparable contracts included no raises.

But for Blakeman starting off on a sweet footing with unions, made suddenly friendly by a good contract, is the way business was often done by Republicans during the era when he was in Nassau government, including as the legislature’s presiding officer in the late 1990s.

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

Riding the wave

Among the Democrats who got caught up in last week’s red wave in Suffolk County was Legis. Kara Hahn, who was running for reelection to her county seat but is also looking ahead to a CD1 congressional primary in June.

On Election Night, the Setauket Democrat was ahead by 74 votes against Salvatore SB Isabella, who the Suffolk GOP said was not actively campaigning. At least 716 Democrats, 207 Republicans, and 211 blank voters also returned absentee ballots, a breakdown that has Hahn "cautiously optimistic," she tells The Point.

That wouldn’t be the resounding victory Hahn probably wanted en route to her federal bid, particularly when another CD1 hopeful, Legis. Bridget Fleming, was leading her own opponent by almost 16% on the night of the election.

Hahn explained the tight race by saying "it's no secret last Tuesday was a rough night for Democrats not only in Suffolk County, but across the nation."

She said she wasn’t going to "try to point fingers at any one thing that caused a real tidal wave of turnout for the other side."

There was certainly a decisive shift in the district from previous elections. Hahn’s 2017 and 2019 opponents never cleared 7,000, already less than the 7,508 in-person votes counted against her this year. And those earlier races saw her topping 10,000 votes both times, including 11,909 in 2017, which is some 3,000 more than Hahn would net even if she won every absentee this year.

The election hasn’t changed Hahn’s views about running for Congress, and she says she wouldn’t engage in the "hypothetical" of whether she’d run even if she lost her legislative race.

On the ledger in support of her congressional run, she noted that she represents and had to run in a legislative district in the Town of Brookhaven, which she called "a real working class, middle class, swing part of this congressional district," the kind of place where she thinks it’s "important that we just continue to work for the people and listen to issues they're facing day in and day out."

She sees the infrastructure bill that passed Congress last week as a sign to Long Island voters that her party is willing to invest in jobs and the economy.

"We definitely have a long way to go, but it goes a long way to reminding voters that Democrats, you know, want to solve problems," she said.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

A potshot

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

Criminal justice politics, 2021

After a disastrous Election Day for Democrats on Long Island where 2019 changes to the state’s bail system were a major campaign issue, there are already rumblings out of Albany that criminal justice won’t exactly be first on the docket for Democrats in power.

That may be one factor behind some activists’ decision to launch a #HochulBringThemHome campaign urging the governor to use her power to grant clemency "frequently, inclusively, and transparently," according to a news release.

It’s "not waiting for the legislature," says Serena Liguori, executive director of New Hour for Women and Children-Long Island, a nonprofit that focuses on women and children impacted by incarceration. "That’s very different than the whole push and pull of Democrats and Republicans."

Liguori spoke with The Point about the current state of criminal justice politics ahead of the clemency campaign’s Hauppauge rally, one of multiple Tuesday events around New York.

Asked if she was picking up on a backlash to bail among state lawmakers, she said, "yes."

"The blowback from bail has been enormous. And yet, I think bail is an easy target," she said, noting that there has been much "miseducation" about the issue and that larger national political winds were also at play in the local elections last week.

"We're not going to give up on legislative reform," Liguori said, pointing to sentencing and parole changes as continued priorities. But she has recently spoken to Hochul staffers via Zoom and was hopeful about clemency given the governor’s previous actions last month transferring women and trans-identified people from Rikers Island to state facilities.

Hochul spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said there have been no clemency announcements yet, and "[w]hile we cannot comment on pending clemency applications as the process is confidential, Governor Hochul is committed to improving justice, fairness, and safety in the criminal justice system, and we are reviewing applications in that context."

As for larger criminal justice issues, Liguori suggested that state lawmakers should not cede the field.

"We just have to do it with the right tone and the right, clear messaging," she said of Democrats. "I mean, that's always been our problem. The messaging."

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

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