TEXT OF DEMOCRATIC RESPONSE TO COUNTY EXECUTIVE STEVE LEVY'S STATE OF THE COUNTY ADDRESS, FEB. 15, 2011, DELIVERED BY COUNTY LEGISLATOR JON COOPER (D-HUNTINGTON)
Good evening, I’m Suffolk County Legislative Majority Leader Jon Cooper from Huntington. I’d like to thank News 12 and FIOS 1 for bringing you my remarks this evening. I’d also like to thank the men and women of the West Sayville Fire Department for so graciously welcoming me to their facility to speak with you.
If the horrifying events in Tucson last month have taught us anything, it should be that you can’t have civil discourse without first demonstrating civility to those with whom you disagree.
As Long Island and the entire nation continue to feel the persistent effects of the most devastating recession in nearly a century, the need for shared solutions and shared sacrifices is more apparent than ever before.
My legislative colleagues and I do agree with the County Executive on certain priorities and policies. Especially when it comes to protecting the pocketbooks of our hardworking, taxpaying families.
Ever since Democrats won the majority of seats in the Legislature back in 2005, we’ve kept government operating without even once allowing an increase in your general fund property taxes.
Unfortunately, every year, the County Executive implies that it is he — and he alone — who has held the line on your taxes.
But it is actually the Legislature’s bipartisan working group that crafts the budget, which is then adopted by a majority of our 18-member body.
You just heard the County Executive’s proposal to reduce Suffolk’s four-percent cap on discretionary spending to two-percent via a ballot referendum this coming November. There’s no question that government — like everyone else — has to live within its means. And while his proposed cap may seem like an admirable goal, it’s really nothing more than an election-year ploy to trick you into believing that he is effectively managing our budget crisis.
In fact, the existing county cap laws have arguably accomplished the opposite of what they were intended to do. They have actually increased overall spending. How can that be? It’s simple - one of the major expenses exempted from the caps is mandated debt service.
This administration has consistently avoided pay-as-you-go spending in favor of borrowing, which results in short-term savings at the expense of significantly higher long-term costs.
This borrowing avoids the scrutiny of controlling discretionary costs, but in the end is contributing to larger structural budgetary problems that will make it increasingly difficult to manage future county budgets. All we have to do is look at Nassau County to see how this plays out. That is the legacy that this County Executive will leave us. And introducing another seemingly more stringent cap law will only make the situation worse.
The cap that the County Executive is proposing at the local level is what Governor Cuomo has already called for in Albany. And that’s where we REALLY need a spending cap — at the STATE level. Because in all fairness, it’s mandated expenses emanating from the backroom halls of Albany that are playing a major role in the financial predicament that Suffolk County—and all local governments in New York— currently find themselves in.
One area that desperately needs reform is our state pension system. However, not only should changes be made to the benefit side of the equation, but more focus should be placed on changing the funding requirements.
In 2010, Suffolk County had to pay almost 90 million dollars into the state’s retirement fund. This year that figure will grow to more than 135 million dollars. That’s because local governments are required by state law to fund their pensions 100 percent, even though the U.S. Government Accountability Office has determined that funding public pensions at only 80 percent is a sound financial practice.
So who benefits from all that influx of cash? You might guess the retirees, but what they get is a mere pittance compared to the real winners—Wall Street brokers and Albany lobbyists.
So, as municipalities are starting to face the very real questions of viability and sustainability, special interests are raking in millions, all while breaking the backs of local governments and taxpayers.
Reforming the benefit side of pensions will take time and compromise, but changing the funding mandates should be a no-brainer.
It’s very fitting that I’m speaking to you from a firehouse, because this backdrop makes us mindful of the hard work and sacrifices made every day by our first responders. And if there is a major policy area where my legislative colleagues—both Republican and Democrat—have differed greatly with the County Executive, it is nowhere more apparent than on the issue of protecting your family’s personal safety.
It’s an election year, so it should be no surprise that the County Executive continues to claim that crime is on the decline and how he is now championing various crime-fighting initiatives, most of which actually originated in the Legislature.
At a time when we should be coming together to combat the very real threats facing our communities, like heroin and gang violence, the Legislature has instead had to spend the last six years fighting the County Executive just to maintain necessary public safety resources in the face of his continuing denials that crime is on the rise and his claims that we are all safer since he took office.
But how safe can we really be when police ranks are at their lowest level since 1996?
And every time he talks about how he is doing more with less in the police department through civilianization, redeployments and the creation of special task forces, the County Executive is literally playing a shell game with your family’s safety. By shuffling our undermanned crime fighting resources to the “hot spot of the day”, the only thing you can be sure of is that there is more crime and violence in your community and fewer resources to combat them.
One person who the County Executive has not been able to fool is Catherine Donnelly, a mother of three who lives in East Patchogue. Last fall she testified in favor of my proposal to implement the ShotSpotter gunshot location system in high-crime areas across Suffolk County.
Crime is an issue Ms. Donnelly knows about all too well. She stated that more than 20 shootings, break-ins and incidents of street violence occurred on her block last year. As a result, she said her family simply cannot go outside their home once it's dark.
So if her family runs out of milk, she tells her kids they just have to do without until the morning comes.
But evidence of the County Executive’s inability to effectively manage — and more disturbing still — adequately prioritize public safety is not just anecdotal. It can be measured in real hard numbers.
Just last month, the Legislature discovered that more than 1,500 probationers were reclassified to minimal supervision status, all because of a lack of probation officers necessary to monitor them.
This is occurring even though the Legislature voted to put more than one million dollars in the budget to re-staff the ranks of desperately needed probation officers.
The bottom line is the County Executive just refuses to hire them.
That means no home visits, no spot searches AND no driving intercepts.
The lack of the latter is particularly troublesome because at a time when drunk and wrong–way driving accidents are reaching epidemic numbers, many of these offenders are DWI’s, convicted of driving while intoxicated.
So now, instead of the intensive probation originally mandated, these offenders are only required to check in once every three months. Is that really getting your money’s worth?
Another major public safety challenge the County faces is how to properly deal with sexual predators.
The state mandates that we help house homeless sex offenders. And as distasteful as that may be, it does allow the County to track and limit where these offenders can live. And that’s just what we in the Legislature have tried to do.
In response to that Albany mandate, it was the County Legislature that wrote and adopted numerous laws limiting how close sex offenders can reside to places where children live or gather.
This past year my colleagues and I also adopted measures which stipulate that only a limited number of sex offenders can be allowed to live at any one location. They would be placed at sites that would be fully supervised – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week - and local residents would be notified of their presence.
While there are no perfect solutions, what the Legislature advocates is much more responsible than what the County Executive wants to do with these predators. Which is just hand them taxpayer-funded housing vouchers and then turn them loose on your unsuspecting community without any warning or supervision.
Without question, what I’ve just shared with you are just a few of the many dire challenges we face. But as we go forward to meet these challenges, we must do so together.
If we embrace this mindset, I’m confident we can overcome the great challenges facing us today. And in so doing, we’ll set the example needed to lead us in creating a better tomorrow. Not only for ourselves, but for our children as well.
Thank you and good night.