Youth Boards Petition Nassau Legislature to Stop Cuts

About 40 representatives from youth board agencies from the area attended a Nassau County Legislature meeting Monday to fight proposed spending cuts.

“Children are not partisan,” Great Neck-based Community Organization for Parents and Youth CEO María Elisa Cuadra said, bringing with her a number of young people whom she had already hired for their “Kids Helping Kids” program and now may have to let go. The program runs on $25,000 a year and provides for about 30 children.

“It is not the legislature which is enacting these cuts on these youth programs, it is the administration,” Majority Leader Peter Schmitt, R-Massapequa, said. “We’re in store for an extremely disruptive, ugly period where there’s going to be significant cut backs, layoffs. I don’t think anybody up here is happy about the cuts that are being made.”

The cuts are part of a $100 million reduction in the 2011 budget due to the control period issued by the , the state oversight board in charge of the county’s finances. County Executive Ed Mangano has proposed to plug a budget gap estimated by NIFA to be $176 million in 2011.

Cuadra said the youth board cuts, which totaled a 57 percent reduction in funding, were “shocking enough” but when board members began contacting the county, they were told the cuts were made “was because many program directors earned an excess of $300,000.” Cuadra says the salary figure is utterly false.

Nassau on the steps of the saying that cuts to Republican districts totaled about three to 5 percent whereas Democratic districts have been cut from 50 percent up to being completely eliminated. Of the $1.7 million cut, $1.4 million is said to come from Democratic districts.

Schmitt denied that the cuts were made along party lines, saying “what was looked at was the amount of county funding that was flowing into various legislative districts and many districts double cut more heavily than other districts,” and that while “we have compassion, we have understanding... our compassion for the taxpayer is greater.”

Leg. Kevan Abrahams, D-Hempstead, called Schmitt’s statement “false,” labeling the percentage cuts “outrageous” and saying that “the bottom line is... 5 percent cuts in Republican districts areas in Elmont, areas in the Five Towns, areas in Long Beach all saw 5 percent cuts all happen to be represented by Republican legislators.”

According to a bill passed by the legislature in 2009, was to have aid for social services for youth, seniors, chemical dependency and developmental disabilities.

The county had projected receiving $29 million in revenue from the red light camera fund, whereas only  $12.5 million is needed to run youth board services.

“For kids to be held up on a partisan basis is wrong,” Legis. David Denenberg, D-Great Neck, “but none of these cuts should be happening. We’re discussing cuts that should not be happening under law.”

The Mangano administration has requested authorization from New York State to from 50 to 100. The state senate has passed such a bill and according to Elmont-based Gateway Youth Outreach Executive Director Pat Boyle the bill will be brought up before the assembly on May 2.

“I don’t want to see equal cuts, I don’t want to see disparity cuts, I don’t want to see any cuts to the youth board,” Boyle said imploring for help petitioning to help pass the legislation. “I would rather be coming to you here later on to be able to discuss funding and discuss other things knowing that I’m going to be able to make it through December of this year.”

Abrahams was less than receptive to the idea of the legislature lobbying as the Democratic caucus is upset over how the current revenue is being channeled.

“You want this body to basically push legislation when we don’t have the guarantee and we’re seeing the blatant abuse of the current law to actually push for new legislation for new moneys,” he said. “I think its unconscionable.”

Joseph Smith, leader of the Nassau County Youth Board Coalition, urged the legislators to act. “What’s at stake are lives,” he said. “The bottom line is theses are the resources, these are the services that people move to Nassau County to have and to behold and count on.”