Elmont Online

UNIONDALE, N.Y. — A state oversight board has seized control of Nassau County’s finances, saying the wealthy and heavily taxed county had nonetheless failed to balance its $2.6 billion budget despite months of increasingly ominous warnings.

The 6-0 vote here on Wednesday afternoon by the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority gives it veto power over the county’s budget, labor contracts, borrowings and other major financial commitments.

The board cited a deficit that reached nearly $350 million at one point last year but that was not fully closed, it said, despite assurances to the contrary by the county executive, Edward P. Mangano.

It was only the second time a county had been taken over by New York State. The first was Erie County, the state’s 24th wealthiest county, where the median household income is half that of Nassau’s, New York’s richest county. The control period in Erie ended in 2009.

Read Wendy Phillips' blog and NY Times Article

The move effectively puts the finance authority board, a six-man panel of state-appointed financial experts and other professionals, at the bargaining table opposite Nassau’s civil servants, police officers and other labor unions.

The board also could unilaterally impose a freeze in wages, a strong club for Nassau, which has been sapped by lucrative salaries, benefits and costly work rules for its police and other workers. But the board chose to stop short of that for now, saying it would try to work with the county first.

The county said it would consider suing to block the takeover.

Mr. Mangano inherited a growing deficit when he took over in January, but his first action worsened it: he eliminated a tax on home heating fuel that would have reaped $40 million in revenue. His 2011 budget also counted on $60 million in phantom concessions from labor unions, more than $20 million in state aid that has not materialized, and $100 million in new borrowing for operating expenses.

In December, he also unsuccessfully lobbied the Legislature for approval of a quarter-percent increase in the sales tax, which would have raised $60 million.

Nassau’s renewed fiscal problems have angered many residents, coming so soon after the county’s last fiscal meltdown, in 1999. Results of that crisis included a $100 million state bailout and the establishment of the oversight board.

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