Eyeing performance of local governments
Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice with Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano announce the closing of the county crime lab. (Feb. 18, 2011) Credit: Howard Schnapp
Fiscal troubles tend to dominate the government news. Yet in several recent public episodes, matters of money have been overshadowed by serious questions in the realm of performance, training or management.
In one, physical conditions and command structure drew monitors' disfavor at the Nassau jail -- five years after a period of federal oversight ended. The concern about resources involves the county being blocked from charging millions of dollars to house Suffolk inmates.
In another case, botched testing at the Nassau County police crime lab led to a probe in which state Inspector General Ellen Biben summoned County Executive Edward Mangano and his predecessor Thomas Suozzi, and many others, for interviews.
Now, add in the sensitive questions of protocol and circumstance that surround police discharges of firearms. In Huntington Station in late February, a dispute between a taxi driver and two off-duty Nassau police officers ended up with the 26-year-old cabbie shot and wounded -- and conflicting accounts of the incident. In Massapequa Park last month came the tragic fatal shooting, by an MTA police officer, of Nassau police officer Geoffrey J. Breitkopf-- which occurred at the scene of an earlier police shooting. Authorities are reported to be reviewing those events.
In New York City, a criminal trial is commencing against three construction supervisors and a corporation in connection with the 2007 blaze in a bank building under demolition near Ground Zero that resulted in two firefighters' deaths. Though municipal officials weren't charged, city officials' possible roles in allowing unsafe conditions at the site are expected to come up. Also in the city, child-protection procedures are changing again, stemming from the death of an abused 4-year-old.
All these cases involve harsh glimpses of how various government offices operate -- sometimes with life-or-death consequences that go beyond budgets.
NASSAU PARTY PICK: State and Suffolk Independence Party chairman Frank MacKay says Richard Bellando, 45, of Farmingdale, sales manager at Oheka Castle, will be the Nassau party committee's "point person" for recommending election endorsements to the state executive committee. Bellando is former son-in-law of Oheka owner Gary Melius. MacKay announced recently that Bobby Kumar is no longer Nassau party chairman.
