NEW YORK - Nassau County, N.Y., Executive Edward Mangano Tuesday evening released a revised fiscal 2011 budget that includes more than 200 layoffs, spending cuts, and $8 million of debt restructuring.
The plan also relies upon the Nassau County Interim Finance Authority enforcing a wage freeze to generate $10.5 million of savings. Fiscal 2011 began Jan. 1.
Mangano’s new budget does not raise property taxes. The Long Island county needed to craft a new spending plan after NIFA rejected Mangano’s proposal to use bond proceeds to pay property-tax refunds, or tax certiorari settlements. The county has used bond proceeds in the past to meet such obligations.
“Since the last thing Nassau families need in these tough economic times is a double-digit property tax increase, I have cut government spending,” Mangano said in a statement. “This first round of cuts will affect every area of the county and the services we provide.”
Nassau will save $60.5 million in labor reductions, including $50 million from laying off 213 workers and imposing 13 furlough days. Another $10.5 million would come from a proposed wage freeze, although NIFA would need to approve that.
NIFA’s board is set to meet Thursday to review Mangano’s revised budget.
Further spending cuts total $44.7 million. Those will come from reducing contractual expenses, restructuring the police department, ending the county’s agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to operate Long Island buses, privatizing inmate health care, and reducing overtime at the Nassau County Correctional Center.
Mangano anticipates the county can realize $8 million of debt-service savings by restructuring debt to ease such costs this year by extending those payments to future years.
The county calculates that its tax-refund liability expenses are $30 million below NIFA projections and that it will gain $24 million from revenue measures. Land sales and securitizing county property would bring in $8.8 million and officials anticipate $5.9 million of higher sales-tax receipts due to stronger collections.
Mangano said Nassau also has other funds to tap into, if need be, including a $65 million county fund balance, $35.3 million of cash on hand for property-tax refund payments, $17.2 million from the 2010 budget surplus, and $10.5 million of reserve funds.
NIFA in late January imposed a control period after it found the county to have a fiscal 2011 deficit of $176 million, which is more than 1% of the $2.6 billion spending plan. Nassau contested NIFA’s control period but a judge last week ruled against the county’s temporary injunction to stop NIFA’s oversight.
