Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone leaves office, with uncertain future
As Steve Bellone ends 12 years as Suffolk County executive, everyone — from his three children to his mechanic to the staffers at Wally’s Bagels in North Babylon — is asking him the same question: What are you going to do now?
Bellone, a term-limited Democrat, has not publicly announced his next step but hasn’t ruled out another run for office. His final official day is Sunday.
“I'm obviously still interested in service,” he said in an interview with Newsday. “And I am concerned about where the region's going, and frankly, where the country is going. So, we'll see.”
Bellone, 54, of West Babylon, has received positive marks on economic development and water quality initiatives, with thousands of new transit-oriented housing units built and more sewers in construction since the 1970s.
He has been criticized for antagonistic relationships with some officials and an inability to bring his larger goals to fruition. His administration suffered from several crises, including Superstorm Sandy, a corruption scandal that sent his police chief and the district attorney to prison, the death of an abused boy after the county's social service department failed to remove him from his home, and a massive cyberattack on county government.
In his final weeks, Bellone failed to persuade county lawmakers to pass legislation he said would help the county qualify for cyber insurance. He announced a flurry of new initiatives: a public dashboard with statistics on Child Protective Services caseloads, which are still above his administration's goals; a unit to diversify the county's vendor contracts, most of which go to businesses owned by white men; and community advisory boards for each of the police department’s seven precincts. Civil rights advocates say Suffolk has still not made the bulk of changes outlined in its 2021 police reform plan.
Bellone has bristled at much of the criticism and continued positioning himself as a corruption fighter who took on “big problems” in office.
“We dealt with crisis from the beginning and right through to the end,” Bellone said. “I'm proud of the way that our team has always stood up and done a terrific job.”
Bellone's tenure began in 2012 with a multiyear budget deficit that some estimated at over a half-billion dollars. He leaves with more than $1 billion in reserves, boosted by federal pandemic aid and higher-than-expected sales tax revenues.
In between, there were hundreds of county layoffs, legislative battles over cost-cutting measures, such as closing the John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility in Yaphank, and moving the county’s health centers to the private sector, and one-shot revenues like the sale/lease-back of the H. Lee Dennison building in Hauppauge.
Marty Cantor, director of the Long Island Center for Socio-Economic Policy, said the county could still be in financial trouble if it had not received $500 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.
“The county was going down the tubes. This is all because of the free money,” Cantor said.
Bellone said his long-term financial plan depended on the global economy improving.
“If we do all of these things [to streamline government], at some point those efforts are going to marry up with the economy turning around,” Bellone said. “This took longer than I would have liked, but we can't control the economy.”
His administration said it has implemented the largest expansion of wastewater infrastructure in Suffolk in over a half century, securing more than $500 million in federal and state grants to connect over 6,000 parcels to sewers and replacing more than 1,600 cesspools and septic systems with high-tech systems.
About 360,000 Suffolk County parcels, or about 75%, are unsewered and rely on outdated septic systems and cesspools that do not remove nitrogen from wastewater before it is discharged into the ground. Bellone's administration developed the 842-page Subwatersheds Wastewater Management plan, a $4 billion blueprint to reduce nitrogen and improve water quality in the next five to 10 years.
“He was a good advocate for sewers, which is something that politicians never would ever talk about, because of all the scandals associated with the Southwest Sewer District in the '70s and '80s,” said Kevin Law, board chairman of Empire State Development, the state’s primary business-aid agency. “But Steve knew that sewers are needed if economic development is going to occur in Suffolk County, and if multifamily housing projects were going to occur.”
Efforts to establish a stable revenue source for a major countywide expansion of sewers failed this year when the Republican-controlled legislature balked at a ballot referendum on raising sales taxes by .125%.
“I'm very hopeful that the next administration will get it across the goal line,” Bellone said, referring to GOP County Executive-elect Ed Romaine.
Bellone's economic development initiatives included $41.5 million to support 2,200 affordable housing units and planning assistance for towns and villages to build transit-oriented development projects. That work helped bring 3,200 residential units to over 30 developments.
His other ambitious goals remain unfinished. The Connect Long Island initiative called for north-south transit linking downtowns, businesses and research centers. Some aspects, like relocating the Yaphank Long Island Rail Road station closer to Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, are moving forward. Others, like adding rapid bus transport along the Nicolls Road corridor, have stalled.
Suffolk County Democratic chairman Rich Schaffer, who has feuded with Bellone for the last several years, criticized Bellone’s struggle to finish larger projects.
“I'm going to call him the coffee table book county executive,” Schaffer said. “What's a coffee-table book? It's decorative. It's something nice that you put out on a coffee table … and then you open up and there's nothing in it.”
Bellone said Schaffer’s comments were “silly” and that ambitious goals take time.
Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, agreed.
“If you keep your goals modest, and your horizons lower, you're going to proportionally get more done than somebody who comes up with a visionary plan that requires progress, not over a year, or a term, but even perhaps a decade,” he said.
Bellone’s tenure hit a particularly rough patch as former District Attorney Thomas Spota and Chief of Police James Burke were convicted and sent to federal prison for covering up Burke’s 2012 beating of a suspect who was in custody and chained to the floor.
It was later revealed that Burke, appointed by Bellone in 2011, previously had lost his service weapon, had a personal relationship with a woman with a criminal record and engaged in sex acts in his patrol car.
Bellone maintains he was not aware of Burke’s past and only selected him because Spota and others vouched for him. Newsday has reported Bellone was warned about Burke in an anonymous letter that the county executive said he dismissed because it did not seem believable.
“I didn't know Jim Burke, never heard of him and didn't know who he was,” Bellone said. “What I was told about him is that he was the top investigator for the district attorney who at the time and for many years thereafter was regarded publicly as a corruption fighter, a person of integrity. And that's certainly what I thought at the beginning of my term.”
Legis. Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga), a retired Suffolk County Police detective and frequent critic of Bellone and the police unions, said it was inexcusable that Bellone did not terminate Burke after Newsday began reporting the allegations in 2013. Burke resigned in 2015, about two months before his arrest.
“How do you not fire the guy?” Trotta said. “What message are you sending the rank and file cops?”
Bellone said true change was not possible until Spota was out of office. Spota did not seek reelection in 2017 amid the ongoing federal probe. Democrat Tim Sini, a Bellone ally, was elected that year.
“I understood that in order for this government to move forward that the district attorney had to go and not only had to go, had to be replaced by a district attorney of integrity,” Bellone said.
In 2020, Suffolk Child Protective Services came under fire after it was revealed the agency received dozens of reports that 8-year-old Thomas Valva suffered severe abuse yet allowed him to continue living with the couple later convicted of murdering him. Thomas died of hypothermia in January 2020 after he and his brother were forced by his father, Michael Valva, and Michael's fiancee, Angela Pollina, to sleep in the Center Moriches family's unheated garage.
The county legislature in 2020 approved reforms to increase oversight and reduce CPS caseloads, and Bellone has said the county is looking to increase caseworker salaries. On Dec. 21, Bellone said caseload levels are still not below 12 cases or fewer per worker but that the county is on track to reach that goal in May.
The county is facing a $200 million lawsuit filed by Thomas' mother, Justyna Zubka-Valva.
More criticism followed a widespread ransomware attack, discovered in September 2022, that exposed the Social Security numbers of about 26,000 county employees and driver's license information for nearly a half-million people and took county services offline for months.
Bellone said the county had taken cybersecurity seriously and conducted a cyber checkup in 2019. But he said Suffolk's cybersecurity functions, which are segmented under departments run by independently elected officials such as the county clerk and district attorney, should have been centralized sooner.
“I at least wish I would have made the attempt to end that segregated environment with the clerk's office,” he said. “But given what we're continuing to see today, I would suggest that it would have been very unlikely that people would have given up that independence.”
A bill he backed to unify cybersecurity compliance across county departments died in the legislature Dec. 20. Days earlier, Bellone ended 16 months of emergency orders tied to the attack and ordered Peter Schlussler, the county employee he blamed for it, back to work after a period of paid leave.
Bellone said his immediate future includes spending more time with his children, Katie, 15, Mollie, 14, and Michael, 11.
It’s hard to imagine he is leaving politics for good.
Bellone held his annual golf fundraiser in September, raising speculation of another political run. He has $305,990 left in his campaign account, according to the state Board of Elections. Major donors declined to comment on his plans, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat who gave more than $143,000 between 2015 and 2021.
Bellone's next political move brings challenges, analysts say. A potential bid for governor would depend on whether Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul seeks reelection, said Shawn Donahue, a University at Buffalo political science professor. He noted that path wasn't successful for Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive who left his 3rd District congressional seat for a 2022 primary bid against Hochul.
Donohue said a congressional run might be more feasible, pointing to Republican Marc Molinaro of Dutchess County and Democrat Pat Ryan of Ulster County, who served in Congress after county executive positions.
Nassau County and state Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs said Suffolk likely has not seen the last of Bellone.
“I would not be surprised if we found him once again, in the future, seeking public office or in some other way serving the public in some capacity,” Jacobs said.
Corrrection: Bellone’s tenure began in 2012 with a multiyear budget deficit that some estimated at over a half-billion dollars. A Dec. 30 story misstated the amount.
As Steve Bellone ends 12 years as Suffolk County executive, everyone — from his three children to his mechanic to the staffers at Wally’s Bagels in North Babylon — is asking him the same question: What are you going to do now?
Bellone, a term-limited Democrat, has not publicly announced his next step but hasn’t ruled out another run for office. His final official day is Sunday.
“I'm obviously still interested in service,” he said in an interview with Newsday. “And I am concerned about where the region's going, and frankly, where the country is going. So, we'll see.”
Bellone, 54, of West Babylon, has received positive marks on economic development and water quality initiatives, with thousands of new transit-oriented housing units built and more sewers in construction since the 1970s.
WHAT TO KNOW
- Steve Bellone, a Democrat who has served as Suffolk County executive for the past 12 years, leaves office Sunday because of term limits.
- Bellone has not publicly announced his next step but hasn’t ruled out another run for office.
- His administration has been praised for economic development and water quality initiatives. Setbacks included a law enforcement corruption scandal, the death of 8-year-old Thomas Valva and a massive cyberattack on county government.
He has been criticized for antagonistic relationships with some officials and an inability to bring his larger goals to fruition. His administration suffered from several crises, including Superstorm Sandy, a corruption scandal that sent his police chief and the district attorney to prison, the death of an abused boy after the county's social service department failed to remove him from his home, and a massive cyberattack on county government.
In his final weeks, Bellone failed to persuade county lawmakers to pass legislation he said would help the county qualify for cyber insurance. He announced a flurry of new initiatives: a public dashboard with statistics on Child Protective Services caseloads, which are still above his administration's goals; a unit to diversify the county's vendor contracts, most of which go to businesses owned by white men; and community advisory boards for each of the police department’s seven precincts. Civil rights advocates say Suffolk has still not made the bulk of changes outlined in its 2021 police reform plan.
Bellone has bristled at much of the criticism and continued positioning himself as a corruption fighter who took on “big problems” in office.
“We dealt with crisis from the beginning and right through to the end,” Bellone said. “I'm proud of the way that our team has always stood up and done a terrific job.”
Finances get federal help
Bellone's tenure began in 2012 with a multiyear budget deficit that some estimated at over a half-billion dollars. He leaves with more than $1 billion in reserves, boosted by federal pandemic aid and higher-than-expected sales tax revenues.
In between, there were hundreds of county layoffs, legislative battles over cost-cutting measures, such as closing the John J. Foley Skilled Nursing Facility in Yaphank, and moving the county’s health centers to the private sector, and one-shot revenues like the sale/lease-back of the H. Lee Dennison building in Hauppauge.
Marty Cantor, director of the Long Island Center for Socio-Economic Policy, said the county could still be in financial trouble if it had not received $500 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.
“The county was going down the tubes. This is all because of the free money,” Cantor said.
Bellone said his long-term financial plan depended on the global economy improving.
“If we do all of these things [to streamline government], at some point those efforts are going to marry up with the economy turning around,” Bellone said. “This took longer than I would have liked, but we can't control the economy.”
His administration said it has implemented the largest expansion of wastewater infrastructure in Suffolk in over a half century, securing more than $500 million in federal and state grants to connect over 6,000 parcels to sewers and replacing more than 1,600 cesspools and septic systems with high-tech systems.
About 360,000 Suffolk County parcels, or about 75%, are unsewered and rely on outdated septic systems and cesspools that do not remove nitrogen from wastewater before it is discharged into the ground. Bellone's administration developed the 842-page Subwatersheds Wastewater Management plan, a $4 billion blueprint to reduce nitrogen and improve water quality in the next five to 10 years.
“He was a good advocate for sewers, which is something that politicians never would ever talk about, because of all the scandals associated with the Southwest Sewer District in the '70s and '80s,” said Kevin Law, board chairman of Empire State Development, the state’s primary business-aid agency. “But Steve knew that sewers are needed if economic development is going to occur in Suffolk County, and if multifamily housing projects were going to occur.”
Efforts to establish a stable revenue source for a major countywide expansion of sewers failed this year when the Republican-controlled legislature balked at a ballot referendum on raising sales taxes by .125%.
“I'm very hopeful that the next administration will get it across the goal line,” Bellone said, referring to GOP County Executive-elect Ed Romaine.
Bellone's economic development initiatives included $41.5 million to support 2,200 affordable housing units and planning assistance for towns and villages to build transit-oriented development projects. That work helped bring 3,200 residential units to over 30 developments.
His other ambitious goals remain unfinished. The Connect Long Island initiative called for north-south transit linking downtowns, businesses and research centers. Some aspects, like relocating the Yaphank Long Island Rail Road station closer to Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, are moving forward. Others, like adding rapid bus transport along the Nicolls Road corridor, have stalled.
Suffolk County Democratic chairman Rich Schaffer, who has feuded with Bellone for the last several years, criticized Bellone’s struggle to finish larger projects.
“I'm going to call him the coffee table book county executive,” Schaffer said. “What's a coffee-table book? It's decorative. It's something nice that you put out on a coffee table … and then you open up and there's nothing in it.”
Bellone said Schaffer’s comments were “silly” and that ambitious goals take time.
Lawrence Levy, executive dean of the National Center for Suburban Studies at Hofstra University, agreed.
“If you keep your goals modest, and your horizons lower, you're going to proportionally get more done than somebody who comes up with a visionary plan that requires progress, not over a year, or a term, but even perhaps a decade,” he said.
Scandals and setbacks
Bellone’s tenure hit a particularly rough patch as former District Attorney Thomas Spota and Chief of Police James Burke were convicted and sent to federal prison for covering up Burke’s 2012 beating of a suspect who was in custody and chained to the floor.
It was later revealed that Burke, appointed by Bellone in 2011, previously had lost his service weapon, had a personal relationship with a woman with a criminal record and engaged in sex acts in his patrol car.
Bellone maintains he was not aware of Burke’s past and only selected him because Spota and others vouched for him. Newsday has reported Bellone was warned about Burke in an anonymous letter that the county executive said he dismissed because it did not seem believable.
“I didn't know Jim Burke, never heard of him and didn't know who he was,” Bellone said. “What I was told about him is that he was the top investigator for the district attorney who at the time and for many years thereafter was regarded publicly as a corruption fighter, a person of integrity. And that's certainly what I thought at the beginning of my term.”
Legis. Rob Trotta (R-Fort Salonga), a retired Suffolk County Police detective and frequent critic of Bellone and the police unions, said it was inexcusable that Bellone did not terminate Burke after Newsday began reporting the allegations in 2013. Burke resigned in 2015, about two months before his arrest.
“How do you not fire the guy?” Trotta said. “What message are you sending the rank and file cops?”
Bellone said true change was not possible until Spota was out of office. Spota did not seek reelection in 2017 amid the ongoing federal probe. Democrat Tim Sini, a Bellone ally, was elected that year.
“I understood that in order for this government to move forward that the district attorney had to go and not only had to go, had to be replaced by a district attorney of integrity,” Bellone said.
In 2020, Suffolk Child Protective Services came under fire after it was revealed the agency received dozens of reports that 8-year-old Thomas Valva suffered severe abuse yet allowed him to continue living with the couple later convicted of murdering him. Thomas died of hypothermia in January 2020 after he and his brother were forced by his father, Michael Valva, and Michael's fiancee, Angela Pollina, to sleep in the Center Moriches family's unheated garage.
The county legislature in 2020 approved reforms to increase oversight and reduce CPS caseloads, and Bellone has said the county is looking to increase caseworker salaries. On Dec. 21, Bellone said caseload levels are still not below 12 cases or fewer per worker but that the county is on track to reach that goal in May.
The county is facing a $200 million lawsuit filed by Thomas' mother, Justyna Zubka-Valva.
More criticism followed a widespread ransomware attack, discovered in September 2022, that exposed the Social Security numbers of about 26,000 county employees and driver's license information for nearly a half-million people and took county services offline for months.
Bellone said the county had taken cybersecurity seriously and conducted a cyber checkup in 2019. But he said Suffolk's cybersecurity functions, which are segmented under departments run by independently elected officials such as the county clerk and district attorney, should have been centralized sooner.
“I at least wish I would have made the attempt to end that segregated environment with the clerk's office,” he said. “But given what we're continuing to see today, I would suggest that it would have been very unlikely that people would have given up that independence.”
A bill he backed to unify cybersecurity compliance across county departments died in the legislature Dec. 20. Days earlier, Bellone ended 16 months of emergency orders tied to the attack and ordered Peter Schlussler, the county employee he blamed for it, back to work after a period of paid leave.
The future
Bellone said his immediate future includes spending more time with his children, Katie, 15, Mollie, 14, and Michael, 11.
It’s hard to imagine he is leaving politics for good.
Bellone held his annual golf fundraiser in September, raising speculation of another political run. He has $305,990 left in his campaign account, according to the state Board of Elections. Major donors declined to comment on his plans, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Democrat who gave more than $143,000 between 2015 and 2021.
Bellone's next political move brings challenges, analysts say. A potential bid for governor would depend on whether Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul seeks reelection, said Shawn Donahue, a University at Buffalo political science professor. He noted that path wasn't successful for Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former Nassau County executive who left his 3rd District congressional seat for a 2022 primary bid against Hochul.
Donohue said a congressional run might be more feasible, pointing to Republican Marc Molinaro of Dutchess County and Democrat Pat Ryan of Ulster County, who served in Congress after county executive positions.
Nassau County and state Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs said Suffolk likely has not seen the last of Bellone.
“I would not be surprised if we found him once again, in the future, seeking public office or in some other way serving the public in some capacity,” Jacobs said.
Corrrection: Bellone’s tenure began in 2012 with a multiyear budget deficit that some estimated at over a half-billion dollars. A Dec. 30 story misstated the amount.
Vera Chinese joined Newsday in 2017 after working as an editor for the East End lifestyle publication northforker and a general assignment reporter for the New York Daily News.
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