The Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the state agency charged with overseeing the county’s borrowing, approved the issuing of $136 million in county bonds at its July 31 board meeting – but NIFA director George Marlin remains highly skeptical of Nassau’s financial footing.
The borrowing, which was scaled down from an earlier $231 million proposal at NIFA’s request, included $67 million for capital projects, $40 million to pay off tax refund liabilities and $23 million for judgments and settlements.
Marlin, who has been harshly critical of Nassau’s accounting practices and claims that it is running a surplus, said in a statement that while the county asserts a $41.5 million budgetary surplus for fiscal year 2012, according to stricter GAAP accounting practices – which accounts for future liabilities like the hundreds of millions in unpaid tax refunds currently owed by the county – Nassau still has an $85.5 million deficit.
“Today I vote yea for this small sliver of the tax cert refunding plan because they did come up with some permanent cuts,” Marlin said in the statement. “But if the County continues its fiscal shenanigans it cannot assume my support in the future.”
Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos has called Marlin’s past criticism politically motivated and said NIFA was unreasonably holding Nassau to accounting standards not used by other New York counties. Comptroller spokesman Jostyn Hernandez told Blank Slate Media in an e-mail that his office stood by its 2012 numbers, which indicate a budgetary surplus.
“Before commenting Mr. Marlin should have first read the County’s independently audited financial results for 2012 that verified the County’s surplus,” wrote Hernandez in the e-mail. “Mr. Marlin can find the report online on the Comptroller’s Web Site.”
In his statement, Marlin said the county had failed to produce promised savings from police consolidation, used long-term borrowing to pay current bills and moved the payment of tax refunds into future years.
Among the $66 million in capital projects were $6 million for improvements in lawmakers’ individual districts, which Newsday reported was demanded by Democrats in the Legislature as a condition of approving the borrowing in July.
The borrowing also included $3 million for the renovation and modernization of police and auxiliary precincts, $5 million for land acquisition and $2.5 million for tree planting.
The bonds will also fund several legal settlements. A legal dispute between the county and the Metropolitan Transit Authority was resolved in May with the county ordered to pay more than $20 million to the MTA in settlements and interest. The lawsuit dated back to a 1996 funding agreement which saw the county receive a $52 million cash infusion from the MTA in exchange for agreeing to pay $102 million back later.
According to Newsday, the county stopped making payments and challenged the legality of the deal in 2001. The MTA counter sued in 2008 and won a trial court ruling in 2011, with an appeals court dismissing Nassau’s appeal in May 2013.
The bonds will also finance a $400,000 settlement with an anti-war protestor who sued after allegedly suffering from a police horse’s kick during protests of the 2008 presidential debates at Hofstra University. Also included in the borrowing are funds for a $450,000 settlement in a racial discrimination suit against the Nassau County Department of Social Services and a $275,000 settlement in a lawsuit alleging that Nassau County police had wrongly confiscated the plaintiff’s firearms.
Reach reporter Dan Glaun by e-mail at dglaun@theislandnow.com, by phone at 516.307.1045 x203 or on Twitter @dglaun. Also follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/theislandnow.
