The following appears in the June 18-24 issue of the Long Island Business News:

Angry voters throughout the nation are coming out in droves to punish incumbents they believe have betrayed them.  Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Bob Bennett of Utah are just two of the political heavyweights that the electorate has sent packing.

A USA Today study released in early June claims that the Tea Party populist movement has also inspired record numbers of political novices to seek public office.  In 33 state primary elections, there has been a 35 percent increase in the total number running for congressional seats.  Of the 1,500 candidates, Republican outnumbers Democrats two to one.  In North Carolina, for instance, 66 people battled it out for house seat nominations – double the number of two years ago.

New Yorkers have also been expressing their wrath at the ballot box.  Last fall they voted out a slew of local incumbents including the Nassau and Westchester county executives.

I have not seen New York voters in such a state since 1970 when James L. Buckley was elected U.S. senator on the Conservative Party line beating Republican Charles Goodell and Democrat Richard Ottinger.  Back then, voters were furious over crime in the streets and college kids rioting against the Vietnam War.  This year their anger is very different; it’s directed toward shameless, corrupt tax-and-spend pols who are captives of public-service employee unions.

Since Democrats control every branch of the state government and every statewide office, one would think that anti-incumbent sentiment would bode well for New York’s Republican Party.  Sadly, this does not appear to be the case.

At their June convention, which was rife with vicious infighting, the Republicans proved they have not recovered from 12 years of Gov. George Pataki’s deliberate smothering of the state GOP organization. Pataki, who abandoned principle in favor of cronyism and patronage, preferred an impotent party to one that would train new talent not subject to Pataki control.

Convinced the GOP political bench was bare, the party’s desperate novice chairman, Ed Cox, talked a Democrat, Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, into seeking the Republican gubernatorial nomination only weeks before the party convention. Both were humiliated when the convention roll call revealed that Chairman Cox delivered only 28 percent of the vote for Levy, far short of the required 51 percent.  Cox, who was expected to pump new life and funds into his moribund party, has proven to be a political empty suit.

The poster boy for the financially and intellectually bankrupt New York GOP is its designated candidate to face Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand – Bruce Blakeman. In 1998 Blakeman was creamed in his statewide run against Comptroller Carl McCall, receiving only 33 percent of the vote.  The next year, Nassau voters booted Blakeman from his county Legislature seat because he failed to grasp that voting to raise property taxes was not the best way to fix the county’s fiscal woes.

Blakeman, who has been campaigning since last fall and has raised very little money, boasts he is well qualified to sit in the U.S. Senate because he has a certificate in Homeland Security from Long Island University.  I recently learned that anyone can audit this program, including Osama bin Laden, because it’s offered online.

If the Conservative Party Senate candidate, former Congressman Joe DioGuardi, successfully petitions himself into the September GOP primary, expect him to beat Blakeman.  If DioGuardi runs solely on the Conservative line in November, he could very well receive more votes than the hapless Blakeman.

New Yorkers are demanding strong, bold leadership to fix a broke, dysfunctional state.  By failing to meet those demands at their convention, the Republicans have squandered an opportunity to take back control of state government and may have consigned themselves to a permanent minority status following redistricting.  Overtaxed New Yorkers deserve better.

This article I wrote appears in the New York Post on June 14, 2010.

The following appears in the June 4-10 issue of the Long Island Business News:

In a recent meeting held to discuss suburban problems, the county executives of Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester agreed that unfunded state mandates are consuming too big a share of their budgets. Nassau’s Ed Mangano, speaking for the group, said, “None of us can afford one more unfunded mandate. We want to make that clear.”

For years governors and state legislators have been evading the responsibility of funding programs they wanted by ordering municipalities and school districts to provide and pay for a host of services. To comply with these unfunded mandates, local governments are forced to raise billions in taxes. This, in part, explains why New York’s local per capita taxes are the highest in the nation.

Studies have revealed that New York imposes more mandates than any other state – over 2,000. These mandates consume on average 60 percent of county government budgets.

The Citizens Budget Commission has explained that the main reason for the crippling level of taxation is state policies on Medicaid, education and collective bargaining between unions and local governments.

The Manhattan Institute’s E.J. McMahon agreed: “What this underscores is that the problem we have is a four-letter word: cost. The costs are driven primarily out of Albany, by the state Legislature and the governor. But though the costs are dictated by Albany, Albany does not have to foot the whole bill; that’s the main problem. All they do in Albany is cash the campaign contributions from all the interest groups that benefit from their spending, primarily the unions.”

Medicaid is the poster child for unfunded mandates. Created during the “Great Society” heyday, Title 19 of the Social Security Act of 1965 established guidelines for a Medicaid program that states could adopt to provide medical services for the poor. The federal government would cover half the cost and the states would have to pay the other half.

New York quickly signed on to the program, added numerous amendments that made dependency a way of life and decreed that Albany would pick up only half the state’s portion of Medicaid costs; the rest of the financial burden would have to be shouldered by local governments. As a result, today the average New York county devotes about half of its property taxes to covering its imposed share of Medicaid costs. In Nassau County, the local share of Medicaid is nearly $250 million annually, in Suffolk $230 million – roughly 30 percent of their property tax collections.

The other cause of local government’s skyrocketing cost: New York’s public sector labor laws.

With employee salaries and benefits accounting for about 75 percent of municipal and school district operating expenses, possessing the power to effectively negotiate fair contracts is essential. Unfortunately this is not the case in New York. Over the years the state Legislature, succumbing to the demands of public employee unions, has enacted legislation that puts municipal employers at a disadvantage at the bargaining table.

Here are a few examples: The Public Employee Relations Board hinders municipal employers from implementing cost-saving policies such as subcontracting of services. The Triborough Amendment forbids employers from altering “terms and conditions of employment” after a contract has expired. As a result, teacher unions, for example, have no incentive to seriously negotiate since their members are guaranteed pay increases even in the absence of a contract.

These and scores of other laws, rules and regulations that favor municipal unions explains why the average salary of government workers is higher than private sector employees and why government benefits exceed those in the private sector.

Because time after time Albany’s “powers that be” have, for short-term political advantage, forced mandates without regard to potential consequences, New York’s local governments and school districts are on the edge of a fiscal abyss.

Kessel Asides

Last month, NYPA CEO Richie Kessel downplayed the announcement that NYPA Trustee, Elise Cusak, a Pataki appointee and former Erie County legislator, had gone straight from the NYPA Board, where she served for seven years, to employment at NYPA as a community liaison for $77,500 per year.

Cusak had voted against Kessel’s appointment in 2008 but soon capitulated to Kessel’s charms and resumed her role as a docile and dormant NYPA trustee.  She later voted to extend the Kessel regime at NYPA.

Cusak, who previously worked for a communications firm, may have decided with AG Cuomo likely to succeed Kessel’s patron, Governor David Paterson, and with the State Legislature likely to remain in Democratic hands for years that this was a good time to make peace with Kessel in return for an easy-lifting paid NYPA sinecure.  So, in March Cusak “stepped down” in order to turn up moments later on the payroll.

Long-time observers of Kessel will remember that hiring sitting or former County legislators has been a Kessel tactic at LIPA and NYPA to reward a friend or silence a critic.

Finally, don’t underestimate Kessel’s kind treatment of Cusak in keeping on the reservation other NYPA trustees whose terms may not be extended by Governor Paterson or Cuomo.  Getting the Cusak treatment once they depart the NYPA Board may look attractive in today’s harsh job climate for political hacks of the party out of power.

THE KESSEL COUNTDOWN: 222 DAYS UNTIL RICHIE KESSEL IS FIRED BY THE NEW GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK

The following appears in the May 21-27 issue of the Long Island Business News:

For 15 years, the Town of Oyster Bay leadership has stonewalled a proposed roughly $500 million investment by Taubman Centers in an upscale mall which would create hundreds of construction and permanent jobs and generate millions in tax revenue for hard-pressed governments. Cowed by a small group of NIMBY opponents financed by mall competitors, Town Supervisor John Venditto has taken every possible step to thwart this investment. Taubman, a New York Stock Exchange real estate firm, is reported to have already spent $150 million pursuing its proposed development at the former Cerro Wire site.

This anti-growth kabuki occurs at a time that Long Island employment is more than 7 percent and the Island is facing what may be an incipient jobless recovery. Oyster Bay has said, “Go to hell,” to the 30 percent of those in Long Island’s building trades that are out of work.. That attitude has stopped lots of investment in Oyster Bay over the years. That’s the Oyster Bay way.

As residents and businesses are being suffocated by exorbitant local taxes, the town that is thwarting private-sector investment has purchased a nondescript, contaminated piece of property for $3 million an acre – more than the price of high end property in Old Brookville or waterfront property on the North Shore – that raises the specter of massive stupidity and waste of taxpayer dollars or worse.

In case the Town of Oyster Bay hasn’t figured this out, we are in the midst of one of the worst real estate markets in recent memory. Despite that reality, Oyster Bay recently bought a 3.5-acre parcel contaminated by heavy metals for three to five times the market price for comparable industrial property. Further, in a puzzling abuse of taxpayer funds the town paid 13 percent more than the inflated value because, as Supervisor Venditto said, “Real estate appraisal isn’t a science,” but more of a bargaining tool to use in negotiations.

That property, which is to be taken off the tax rolls, will be used for town soccer fields after town taxpayers invest another $3 million to build the field and related amenities.

Why are Oyster Bay elected officials on the one hand stifling economic growth by blocking Taubman and on the other giving away the store on a real estate transaction for soccer? Call it the arrogance of power.

Representative democracy rests on the principle that people who enter public life are devoted to civic virtue and willing to serve the common good – not the collective good where only select people or groups benefit from government to the exclusion of others.

The Oyster Bay government appears to have evolved into an operation in which a permanent governing class serves themselves and their cronies. They are incumbocrats: members in good standing of that long-ruling coterie that uses fiscal sleight of hand to convince the public that they are responsibly governing, all the while pandering to special interests and increasing spending, taxes and pork.

Incumbocrat Venditto apparently doesn’t grasp or doesn’t care that his residential and commercial taxpayers are being strangled by high town, county and school taxes and that the commercial tax base that provides the revenue to purchase 3-acre soccer fields at grossly inflated prices is rapidly declining. The damage done by this egregious transaction is worsened by the fact that taking these 3 acres off the tax rolls will force the taxes of all other Oyster Bay taxpayers to be raised.

Long Island is at a crossroads – its very survival is at stake. In the midst of this crisis, Oyster Bay has for over a decade taken a strong stand against private-sector investment and job creation and now favors publicly funded bread and circuses for the voters in which no jobs are created. This cynical game can’t go on much longer.