Nassau County Comptroller George Maragos warned last week that the county may end 2014 with a $76.9 million deficit. Is it really possible that nobody saw this coming when the county agreed to generous contracts with the police and other unions?
In his midyear financial projections, Maragos predicted the deficit would cause the county’s structural gap to increase to $242 million. There’s plenty of blame to go around but the buck stops at the Nassau Interim Finance Authority.
NIFA was created to sound the alarm and prevent a crisis like this from happening. NIFA had the power to just say no. It expected to be independent of politics and union pressure.
NIFA dropped the ball. Now it has to step up to the plate and hold the feet of the Mangano administration and the county legislature to the fire. They made promises based on unrealistic projections that they cannot keep.
It appears those promises may have to be broken.
