Schnirman floats plan to fix Nassau’s finances

Long Beach City Manager Jack Schnirman, who is running for Nassau County comptroller, floated a plan on Tuesday to fix the county’s finances and contracting process, saying that demands for reforms have long been ignored.

At a news conference in Mineola, Schnirman, the Democratic nominee seeking the office now held by George Maragos, unveiled four top priorities: modernizing the county’s financial operations; initiating strategic audits to target waste, fraud and abuse; reforming the contracting process; and making the comptroller’s office more accessible to residents.

Schnirman said his plan would bring independence and efficiency to the comptroller’s office while “ending the culture of corruption and cronyism that has destroyed Nassau County finances.”

“The Nassau County comptroller’s office must be independent and fact-based,” he said. “We will take a clear-eyed look at the county’s finances, end the accounting gimmicks and be honest about the difference between a deficit and a surplus.”

Schnirman, 39, who was appointed city manager in 2012, noted how the administration turned the city’s finances around after it inherited a $14.7 million deficit from the previous Republican administration and was on the brink of bankruptcy, as well as the city’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Sandy. He pointed to improved financial controls that led to a turnaround of Long Beach’s reserve fund, which now totals $9.4 million, and credit rating upgrades from Moody’s Investors Service. He pledged to bring the same principles he used in Long Beach to county government.

“In Long Beach, we’ve shown what we can do here in Nassau County,” Schnirman said. “We’re going to open up the books and ask tough questions.”

Schnirman is running alongside County Legislator Laura Curran (D-Baldwin), the Democratic nominee for county executive, and both pledged to root out graft and fix the county’s finances.

Earlier this month, the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the state monitoring board that controls the county’s finances, ordered the county to cut $100 million in spending in its 2018 budget to close a projected budget deficit.

Schnirman pledged to open up the county’s finances by modernizing technology and creating a publicly accessible scorecard with fiscal data. He also proposed initiating “aggressive” audits and re-establishing the county’s Independent Audit Committee/Audit Advisory Committee.

He added that county officials have failed to enact reforms that District Attorney Madeline Singas recommended in a 2015 report on the county’s contracting process to root out corruption, patronage and conflicts of interest.

“We have an enormous deficit and the loss of control over financial decisions because of our failure to get our house in order,” Schnirman said. “We are controlled as a county government by NIFA. We have a contracting system that is slow and decentralized, ripe for corruption — as our district attorney has pointed out — and a failure to reform despite the district attorney recommending reforms over two years ago.”

As comptroller, he said, he would partner with the D.A.’s office and the state to implement reforms.

“I want the people of Nassau to engage with our office,” he said. “It’s time Nassau County does better than an embarrassing D-plus in transparency.”

Schnirman is running against Republican Steve Labriola, a former state assemblyman and a chief compliance officer in Nassau’s Office of Management and Budget.

Kevin Ryan, Labriola’s campaign spokesman, said that Labriola proposed a similar plan when he announced his campaign in early May, which includes creating a whistle-blower hotline so employees and citizens can leave tips anonymously, doubling the number of audits conducted by the comptroller’s office each year, and creating an anti-fraud unit, among other proposals.

“Jack Schnirman’s policy proposals are a complete hijacking of the platform introduced by Republican county comptroller candidate Steve Labriola almost two months ago,” Ryan said. “... He clearly has no original ideas for handling Nassau County’s finances other than mimicking the ones that have already been proposed by his opponent in this year’s election.”

Maragos is running as a Democrat for county executive alongside his pick for comptroller, first-time political candidate and Freeport resident Ama Yawson.

"As comptroller, I will root out waste to decrease the tax burden, provide better access to civil service employment and government contracting opportunities, and attract investment into our communities to make our commercial corridors more dynamic," Yawson said in a statement.

Yawson added that she agreed with ending "the culture of corruption and cronyism in Nassau County through aggressive audits."

"George Maragos has been doing just that and has received numerous national awards for excellence in financial reporting," she said. "But I believe that Jack Schnirman's desire to reform the comptroller's office by essentially fixing it's website misses the mark. The comptroller's office should continue to be a vehicle of positive social change, not devolve into another cog in the political infrastructure."