Last Spring, Suffolk County Executive Steven Bellone and the county legislators approved a dream of a new contract with the Suffolk PBA. The 6-year pact guarantees yearly pay of $200,000 for every officer with 15 years of experience. That puts police among the top earners in the country. The head of the PBA told Newsday the pay was justified by comparing it to the earnings of athletes who don’t have to risk their lives.
Bellone denies that the generous contract had anything to do with the campaign donations he received during his re-election in the fall of 2019. But I’m not buying that. No one donates the kind of money the police unions did without an expectation that their investment is worth it.
Consider that during that last election cycle, police unions gave $40,000 in direct contributions to Bellone, the legal limit. But that was dwarfed by spending on his behalf through a SuperPac, the Long Island Law Enforcement Foundation. It donated whopping $830,000 to support his re-election, and $662,000 to re-elect incumbent county legislators. Because the SuperPac didn’t coordinate directly with the campaign organizations, the donations are unlimited, thanks to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling.
This matters not only because of the conflict of interest and ethical blindness it demonstrates. It matters because the county is in the midst of a state-mandated examination of policing in Suffolk prompted by the killing of George Floyd. It has been holding virtual hearings at which hundreds of residents have been both critiquing thepolice and suggesting changes that would require shifting funds that have now been locked into place by the contract, like using social and mental health workers instead of police to respond to mental health crisis situations. Critics would also like it to be easier to fire bad cops, and discipline procedures are at least in part dictated by the contracts.
Legislator Robert Trotta is the only county politician who is trying to correct the situation. A Republican from Fort Salonga, Trotta is also a retired detective, and he told me collecting garbage or tree work is more dangerous than policing in Suffolk County. He regards the contract and the donations as an ethical conflict of interest that should concern every Suffolk resident.
So he is sponsoring a resolution that would limit direct campaign contributions to no more than $500 for legislators and $3,000 to county-wide officials from employee unions and contractors doing business with the county. Even though it won’t affect the SuperPac donations, It needs to pass if only to demonstrate that the legislators care about the conflict of interest they face.
The same situation is true in Nassau. Nassau locked itself into an 8 1/2-year contract with the Superior Officers Association, and recently signed a new PBA contract against the objections of reform advocates. In a demonstration of their clout, Nassau police demanded and got a bonus of $3,000 a year just to accept wearing body cameras, sucking more money out of the county’s budget for public safety.
Despite what seemed like a very favorable contract, the Nassau police officers rejected the contract. That gives Nassau's leaders the chance to consider the kinds of changes reformers have been advocating. Long Island United to Transform Policing has issued a call for no new contracts in Nassau County without structural police reform.
In Suffolk, the contract remains an obstacle to change.
Trotta's resolution meanwhile continues to languish as neither Suffolk Republicans orDemocrats have shown any appetite for it. They expect us to swallow the idea that contributions have no influence on their actions. Bellone’s spokesman had the brass to tell Newsday that “ campaign contributions do not influence public policy.”
Legislators who accept funding from police unions could recuse themselves from voting on their contract. County ethics rules require recusal if a legislator would benefit financially from a vote. But donations go to their campaigns, not directly to individuals, so there is no direct financial benefit. As for recusal, it wouldn’t work anyway because “the unions give to everyone, so there would be no one to vote on the contract,” says Trotta.
Suffolk residents struggling to make ends meet will feel the impact of the bonanza enjoyed by the police. Especially during a pandemic, if you give police three times the cost of living increase over 6 years, something else has to give. The proposed 2021 Suffolk budget cuts bus routes, raids money from the Clean Water Fund, and shortchanges many other necessary services. The state controller ranks Suffolk County at number 62 among 62 counties in the state with the worst fiscal situation.
Had Suffolk limited the police raise to just the cost of living, Trotta says $250 million would have been saved. And some of that could have been used to finance a matching fund for public financing of campaigns. The county passed a law creating a public finance fund in 2018, and scheduled it to go into effect next year.
It won’t. Because there’s no money for it.
Long Island legislators live in fear that the unions will withdraw their support. The only remedy, it seems, is for us voters to get smart and hold their feet to the fire when election season comes around again. In an interview with the Washington Post, Daniel Oats, former Chief of the NYPD Intelligence Division and police chief in several jurisdictions, said: “there cannot be true (police) reform unless Americans elect politicians willing to take on obstructionist labor leaders.”
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