Nassau, PBA have a deal

Daily Point

Second vote the charm for PBA, Nassau

When Nassau County’s Police Benevolent Association voted on its contract in late 2020, the result was a hair-raisingly close defeat that cost then-president James McDermott his post.

When the membership cast ballots on a very similar contract in voting that ended Jan. 18, the result was an overwhelming affirmation that has to be counted as a victory for both PBA president Tommy Shevlin and County Executive Bruce Blakeman.

And both men said that while the changes in the deal were not huge, and the cost to the county was essentially the same, the landscape had changed dramatically thanks to a new cast of union and political leaders, and the settlement of the union’s longevity beef with the county.

The union has been out of contract since the last day of 2017. In 2020, the contract went down, 707-564. This version won, 1,621-118. It spans about 8 ½ years, increases top base pay from $122,000 to $141,000 over that span, and increases starting pay from $35,000 to $37,333.

“A lot of it was about listening to membership and understanding that these days it’s not all about money,” Shevlin told The Point Thursday. “People are about their families, their lives, so sometimes what they want is a little more freedom to be at an event or occasion. And the officers badly want more training, so they can be safe and keep everyone safe. So the county wants us to work more shifts, and we say we will if you give us more training, there are ways to work things out. The pattern of past deals had NIFA setting a limit on what could be spent, but within that there was room to maneuver.”

Shevlin also said he’s proud of the modernization of the process, and the vast increase in turnout. This was the first Nassau PBA election done electronically rather than by mail, and while 323 members failed to vote in 2020, only 47 did this time.

To Blakeman, one of the big advantages was the county’s settlement of its longevity dispute with all its police unions. The issue had been a political thorn since the 2017 county executive election won by Laura Curran, which helped energize the cop unions against her for the 2021 race she lost.

“We just got to the point, Tommy and I, where we were so close to a deal that we couldn’t walk away,” Blakeman said. “On some things we split the difference, and on some he gave in and on some I did.”

— Lane Filler @lanefiller

Talking Point

The elephant in the room

The county officials and contractors running the virtual meeting of the Nassau Hub Transit Initiative Wednesday night were careful not to bring up the “C” word.

But the recent announcement that Las Vegas Sands hoped to take over the lease at Nassau Coliseum and develop a casino resort there hung over much of the conversation — and, it seemed, was the force driving a lot of the interest in and questions about the county’s transit plans.

But David Viana, a planner at the county Department of Public Works, emphasized that he wasn’t there to talk about a casino.

“We understand there are ongoing developments happening regarding development at the Coliseum site and that will be reflected as the project continues,” Viana said as the meeting began. “Right now, there are proposals that are being considered, but nothing has been finalized and that is not the focus of today’s discussion.”

County officials said they’re moving forward with bus rapid transit plans that will connect Hempstead Village to the Nassau Hub and now are also turning their attention to alternatives that connect to the Westbury Long Island Rail Road station. Among their ideas: a bus-rapid transit option that would travel from the LIRR station, down Post Avenue, to Merrick Avenue, to Hempstead Turnpike, connecting to both Hofstra University and the Coliseum. They also are looking at options that involve the Mineola LIRR station, but are prioritizing Westbury.

But none of the many alternatives outlined by county officials, or consultants with WSP, the firm with whom the county contracted to handle the analysis, involved the potential for light rail — or the so-called “secondary” LIRR spur that was once used by Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus to bring animals and equipment to the Coliseum. And that frustrated some of the commenters in the virtual chat.

“Wouldn’t activat[ing] the old LIRR track in the back of Nassau Community College be a better solution than overwhelming our communities with buses?” asked one.

But Viana said those options could be more expensive and were not currently on the table.

“It’s something we are aware of and we have considered, but at this point our alternatives do not utilize those right of ways,” Viana said.

This week’s meeting kicked off a public comment period that will last until Feb. 1. The team of county officials and consultants will then establish a single preferred alternative to push forward.

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Pencil Point

Storage wars

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Reference Point

Plane politics

Fifty years ago, Long Island was reveling in a much-needed victory.

Aircraft and aerospace manufacturer Fairchild Republic had just won a U.S. Air Force competition to build the plane that became known as the Thunderbolt A-10. And Newsday’s editorial board made clear that the stakes were much higher than a big-dollar contract.

“Fairchild Republic’s great victory yesterday reasserted Long Island’s place in the major league of aviation,” the board wrote in a Jan. 19, 1973 piece called “Celebration at Farmingdale” which also noted that the contract would mean “thousands of jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars” for Long Island’s economy.

“Long Island, where aviation grew up, was in grave danger of becoming an air-age backwater, a sometime supplier of parts to the California aerospace firms that have dominated the industry recently,” the board wrote. “Now the Island has a chance once again to demonstrate its expertise, to restore great engineering and production teams.”

Fairchild Republic — created in 1965 when Fairchild Hiller bought Republic Aviation in East Farmingdale — prevailed in a competition with California-based Northrop to build prototypes, a victory Newsday’s board said was a “tribute to the proficiency of Fairchild Republic’s management and engineering team.”

The board also praised “an energetic coalition” it said lobbied the White House and Pentagon including the region’s congressional delegation, the Long Island Association business group, county executives John Klein (Suffolk) and Ralph Caso (Nassau), and Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. “The teamwork is as worth of preserving as the Island’s aviation heritage,” the board concluded.

From 1976 to 1984, Fairchild Republic produced and delivered 715 A-10s, and the plane acquitted itself well in Operation Desert Storm in Iraq, as well as in the Balkans and Afghanistan and against the Islamic State in the Mideast.

But that other victory — for Long Island’s aviation heritage — was relatively short-lived. In 1987, the Air Force and Fairchild announced that their contract for the T-46A training plane — to be worth as much as $3.5 billion — had been canceled and the Farmingdale plant soon was closed. With it went more than 2,500 jobs.

“This is a very black day for Long Island,” Rep. Tom Downey told The New York Times. “It’s a human tragedy of the first order. Not only are we losing the manufacturing jobs — jewels in any economy — but we also stand to lose the jobs of all the contractors, vendors and others who have depended on the factory.”

As often is the case, politics seems to have played a role in the loss. One powerful opponent of Fairchild’s training plane was Kansas Sen. Bob Dole, whose state was the home of Cessna Manufacturing, which happened to produce the Air Force training plane in use at the time, the T-37.

Long Island wasn’t the only region trying to preserve an aviation heritage.

— Michael Dobie @mwdobie, Amanda Fiscina-Wells @adfiscina