Letters to the Rockville Centre Herald March 15, 2012

Taxes still high, police service slashed

To the Editor:

On March 5, I cast a vote against County Executive Ed Mangano’s plan to close half of the police precincts in Nassau County. Public safety is one of the pillars of the role that government should play in our lives, and my fear is that this plan, which was approved by a 10-9 party-line vote, will jeopardize the safety of our community.

Over the last month we have heard constant and ever-changing details of this plan regarding cost savings, staffing levels and the impact it will have on the police’s ability to effectively patrol our neighborhoods. Sadly, these details were still changing while the Legislature was considering the vote, and on that fact alone, I could not in good conscience support this plan without the opportunity to review a finalized and completed proposal.

After hearing from the administration, the police and the public, it was my belief that this proposal will not save the $20 million that the county executive projects (the independent budget review office estimates only $12.2 million in savings), while dramatically altering the way in which we police our county and protect our citizens. Additionally, there were no assurances put in writing to prevent Mangano (or any future county executive) from further slashing the number of cars on patrol or eventually closing the new community policing centers. Without those assurances and without the approval of an early-retirement incentive, any legislator who voted to approve this plan was voting to lay off police officers.

We pay some of the highest taxes in the country, but unfortunately, even after this plan was passed, your tax bill will stay the same while your level of police service was just slashed in half. In the end, I will continue to listen to the concerns of our residents and work with all parties to address any and all issues related to our safety and security.

Joseph Scannell

County legislator, 5th district

People in glass houses . . .

To the Editor:

After reading Alfonse D'Amato's column “Is Mangano jeopardizing public safety? Don't believe the hype” (March 1-7), I felt compelled to write to say how hypocritical his words were.

D'Amato wrote, “The Nassau County PBA is one of the most powerful unions on Long Island, and it's about time our elected officials had the courage to stand up to the union bosses and put public safety and hard-pressed taxpayers first.” I retired from the Nassau County Police Department with almost 34 years of service. For 27 of those years I was a union official, the last 13 as an Executive Board member of the PBA that Mr. D’Amato now criticizes. I don't remember seeing any of the courage he talked about when he was one of those elected officials who came looking for the endorsement and any financial backing that same union would give him.

He also wrote about county police officers’ salaries and expressed his support for County Executive Ed Mangano’s efforts in “trying to trim the county's deficit and cut waste.” If he’s so concerned about the county's deficit, may I suggest he write about all the patronage jobs handed out by his own political party.

To become a police officer, you have to take a competitive exam, pass stringent background checks and have two years of college and the equivalent of four years of college credits to reach top pay. I'm not exactly sure what the requirements or qualifications are for any of the hundreds of patronage jobs handed out like candy to kids by Mr. D'Amato's political party. I wouldn't have enough time to address all of those patronage jobs and the people who got them, so let me just mention a few of them and whatever their qualifications appear to be.

John Ciotti, counsel for Nassau University Medical Center. Salary: approximately $300,000. Qualifications: former county legislator voted out by his constituents last November but being in the good graces of Joe Mondello, chairman of the Nassau County Republican Committee.

Joseph Cairo, head of Nassau County Off Track Betting. Salary: $100,000-plus. Qualifications: leader of the North Valley Stream Republican Club and former Republican elections commissioner. Cairo got both of these jobs after resigning from the New York state bar and admitting he improperly took $394,000 from his clients’ funds for his own use. Amazingly, he got both jobs with the blessing of his pal, Joe Mondello.

The last one I’ll mention, who I'm sure Mr. D'Amato doesn't want to address, is Lisa Murphy, commissioner of Nassau County Human Services. Salary: $105,000. Qualifications: According to Mrs. Murphy, she had worked part-time at an insurance agency and did volunteer work for the Republican Party and also for her church in Island Park. Seem like great qualifications to me! And there’s one more bit of information: Mrs. Murphy's maiden name is D'Amato. Now there's a qualification that tops them all.

There are hundreds more patronage jobs worth millions of dollars that I could mention, but I think you get the picture. As the old saying goes, people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Warren Healey

Rockville Centre

Train station is inaccessible for the disabled

To the Editor:

Last Saturday, at the Rockville Centre railroad station, I saw a very elderly man climbing up the stairs with great difficulty, complaining bitterly as he negotiated each step. The elevator is being repaired and the escalator wasn’t working. I go into the city frequently on weekends, and find the escalator inoperative most of the time. I wrote to the LIRR, and here is the gist of their reply:

The elevator needs modernizing to reduce mechanical breakdowns. (I accept that.)

The escalator has an on/off switch at the bottom, necessary for emergency situations. Unknown persons or vandals frequently turn the switch off. A special key is necessary to restart the escalator, but no railroad employee is on duty on weekends. (I do not accept that.)

The LIRR gave me a phone number to call to report an inoperative escalator. If one had to call, and then wait for someone with a key to show up, this would certainly mean a missed train. The current situation makes the station totally inaccessible to people with problems. The railroad must find some way to alleviate the situation.

Evelyn Bishop

Rockville Centre

Where are the GOP moderates?

To the Editor:

Your readers don't have to look very far to have Jerry Kremer's soulful lament on the current state of the Republican Party brought close to home. Two recent letter writers — long on passion but short on reasoned discourse — evoked the banal, mindless anger of embittered partisans who live in a changing world they don't like and who look for a convenient explanation for their resentment. Hence the absurd references to Socialist-Marxist conspiracy and the dangerously dead Saul Alinsky, all supposedly cooking up in Obama's godless cauldron.

One of the writers actually decried the presence of partisan opinion expressed in an editorial — imagine that, a political opinion expressed in an editorial!

This would be laughable in itself, but to accuse the often-conservative Herald of Democratic bias is even more of a head-scratcher. Aren't there any Republicans left who haven't had their brains cooked by the Limbaughs and Coulters into a heady stew of apoplectic rage?

Allen Lanner

Rockville Centre