Suozzi to cut his salary by 7 percent, eyes more trims
Suozzi to cut his salary by 7 percent, eyes more trims
NEWSDAY
BY SID CASSESE
March 11, 2009
Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, after negotiating a tentative deal with most of the county government unions, said yesterday he will cut his own salary by 7 percent and is working on a plan to cut salary and benefits from nonunion workers.
"It's only fair," Suozzi said of the April 1 reduction to his $174,614 annual salary. He added that over the next week to 10 days "we will be laying out a plan for $5 million in reductions for exempt employees along the same lines as what we did with the unions."
Despite the unions' accords, some holes in Nassau's projected $130-million financial gap for 2009 still exist, Suozzi said.
The good news, Suozzi said, is that many of the wholesale cuts previously predicted, including the closing of many parks and museums, have been taken off the board-for now.
"There may well be some cutbacks in those areas, since we're expecting to reduce our workforce by more than 300," he said. "But it won't be anything like we thought we might be forced to do."
But even with the fixes - the stimulus package, union members supporting their leaders' agreements and state approval of county proposals for a cigarette tax and a traffic ticket surcharge - county officials concede they are not guaranteed. For example, one of the conditions with the unions is the early retirement of 325 workers.
Nassau Legis. Roger Corbin (D-Westbury) said several state legislators told him that the plan to install red light cameras, which could bring in up to $12 million a year, was dead. "The other two - surcharges and cigarette taxes - could be approved," he said.
Suozzi said that Deputy Assembly Speaker Earlene Hooper (D-Hempstead), who could not be reached yesterday, supports the cigarette tax and surcharge funds. He said he sent her a letter last week, promising to restore his cuts to social service programs, if those two proposals become law.
"I am grateful to both Deputy Speaker Hooper and [state] Sen. Craig Johnson for their help, and I'm optimistic," Suozzi said.
Suozzi noted, though, that some of the budget holes have not been filled. He said he is getting $8 million to $10 million less than the $45 million he expected in Medicaid funding. There's little chance he will get the red light cameras, which would have accounted for another $4 million by the time they would have been installed this year. And, he has yet to reach a deal with correction officers, from whom he wants $7 million in cuts.
If the crisis worsens - for example, a significantly higher decline in sales tax revenue than the 6 percent projected - more cuts can be expected.
"With sales tax projections being just guesstimates, at this stage we are nowhere near out of the woods yet," said Nassau Comptroller Howard Weitzman.
"I don't even want to think about it, but if worse comes to worse," Suozzi said, " . . . well, we've already begun to develop a new set of contingency plans for that."
Although county officials said Monday that the CSEA had agreed to defer pay for three holidays, union president Gerry Laricchiuta said yesterday there is no deferred holiday pay in the final agreement.
Social Networking