You would think that Nassau OTB, a public benefit corporation or perhaps a politician benefit corporation would be open every day of the year just like to the New York State Lottery or the New York Slot Machines. New York State's religious preference is not the religious preference of all the bettors and residents of Nassau County. When tracks are running all across the United States that bettors want to bet, Nassau OTB must be open to take their bets. Is it any wonder Nassau County lacks money? When you want to cash many non IRS NY Lottery tickets, Nassau OTB is the place to go. Nassau OTB also sells NY Lottery tickets. What does Nassau County think bettors do with the money that they win?
sau Newsday > Long Island
NIFA wants Mangano's plan for funding wage hikes in 60 days
Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, shown on Friday, May 2, 2014 in Uniondale. (Credit: Howard Schnapp)
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The budget-balancing mandate was part of a deal reached early Saturday morning to lift a three-year wage freeze that the state control board had imposed on county employees.
Nassau's plan to cover the cost is expected to include the privatization of the county's sewer system, according NIFA chairman Jon Kaiman. Mangano spokesman Brian Nevin called it a contingency.
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A private operator, United Water of Hackensack, N.J., would manage and maintain Nassau's three major wastewater treatment plants, 53 sewage pumping stations and roughly 3,000 miles of sewers. Nassau would pay the firm an annual fee, but Nevin declined to say how much that would be.
The firm would hire an undetermined number of Nassau's 300 sewer system employees. The rest of the workers would be offered other vacant jobs with the county.
Nevin said the proposal "would save millions" annually while allowing the county to continue to set sewage rates.
But, he acknowledged the savings would depend on how many employees leave the county payroll and other operational efficiencies -- minus what the county must pay United Water.
Kaiman agreed the privatization could save millions in payroll costs, but added "we are not putting all of our eggs in one basket." He cited additional revenue from speed cameras and mortgage recording fees and higher projected revenue from sales taxes.
NIFA voted 6-1 in favor of the labor contracts shortly before 2 a.m. after board members met for eight hours behind closed doors with Mangano and union officials.
Chris Wright, the lone NIFA member to vote against the labor contracts, said he has "virtually no confidence" in the county's ability to pay for the deals, which he projects will cost nearly $300 million.
The contracts would provide members of the Civil Service Employees Association, Police Benevolent Association, Detectives Association and Superior Officers Association their first pay increase in three years. A deal with the correction officers union is still pending.
The salary increases, which are retroactive to April 1, would appear in paychecks in four to six weeks and would be followed by a series of pay hikes totaling more than 13 percent by the end of 2017.
"This brings closure for our members going forward," said PBA president James Carver.
"It's been a long process and I am happy for our members that it's finally resolved."The county will hire 162 new cops under the terms of the new labor deal tomorrow. The recruits will undergo six months of training, Nevin said.
Under the agreements, employees would give up annual pay raises that had been due in 2013 and were lost under the wage freeze. The unions, which are still challenging the legality of the freeze, are also giving up any step increases due in 2011 as well as their 2012 salary increase unless a court rules the freeze was illegal. The unions are appealing a State Supreme Court decision that found the freeze legal.
Mangano said the agreement "saves taxpayers hundreds of millions over present contract costs" because of concessions that require new employees to pay a percentage of their health insurance premium and pension costs. But, NIFA said the county must still show it can pay the full cost of the deals.
The board passed a resolution requiring Mangano to modify his 2014-2017 multiyear budget plan to account for a minimum of $130 million in new labor costs. Independent county budget experts estimate the deals could cost between $120 million and $292 million.
NIFA issued a similar directive to the county in January to revise its multi-year plan but the county ignored the request.
The modified budget plan must also include a combined $30 million in further annual funding reductions for county departments -- a contingency to be triggered if other savings and revenue forecasts do not materialize.
If NIFA is not satisfied with Mangano's changes, the resolution provides the board with the authority to modify the budget on its own and impose cuts on county departments.
Legis. Kevan Abrahams, the legislature's Democratic minority leader, said, "We're glad NIFA is making the county go back to the drawing board on the budget to prove it can afford lifting the wage freeze."
The sewer privatization is a key component of the plan. CSEA president Jerry Laricchiuta, whose members include sewage district employees, said his deal with Mangano "guarantees his members a public job with the county" if they are not hired by United Water.
"My members will be protected," Laricchiuta said. "My main focus was their job security."
The plan is different from Mangano's past plan to sell the sewers to a private operator for an upfront payment, Kaiman said. NIFA rejected that proposal as a form of borrowing.
Wright, who opposed the earlier sewer proposal, said he could not judge the soundness of the new plan because he has received virtually no information about it.
"Thus far," Wright said, "this has been a relatively fact-free exercise with the county."
With Joye Brown
and Celeste Hadrick
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude
Solnik
(631)
913-4244
Long
Island
Business News
2150
Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI
Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Nassau County, on the road to ruin, like NYC OTB?
OTB OPEN ON PALM SUNDAY | New York Post
nypost.com/2003/04/13/otb-open-on-palm-sunday/
Apr 13, 2003 - For the first time in history, New York City Off-Track Betting announced yesterday it plans to open today, Palm Sunday, to accept wagers, ...
New York Post
As things now stand, Aqueduct will not be allowed to stage live racing or accept simulcast wagers through its NYRA Rewards account-betting service on April 1 or April 8, the 2012 dates for Palm and Easter Sunday. This already was an absurd prohibition, completely out of step with the rest of the country and with other commerce within the state – you can drink, buy lottery tickets, visit your local peep show on those two holidays, but not bet on a horse race.
The opening of the Resorts World casino at Aqueduct last month makes the situation all the nuttier: No law prevents the slot machines and robot-dealt table games from running on those Sundays, so it will be business as usual at the casino but no racing and wagering at the track itself. If there is a theological justification for this bizarre piece of public policy, its mysteries have not been revealed.
If this indefensible contradiction is somehow not enough to convince lawmakers it is time to scrap the ban, they should consider that the way the racing and religious calendars coincide next year further discriminates against New York horseplayers: Those two Sundays are the closing dates of two major meetings, with mandatory payouts of jackpot bets currently scheduled for two days that many New Yorkers would be shut out of those pools.
Sunday, April 1, is not only Palm Sunday and April Fool’s Day but closing day of the Fair Grounds meeting that opened on Thanksgiving with a new Black Gold 5 wager – a daily pick five where 50 percent of the net pool is carried over unless there is a single, unique winning ticket. It remains to be seen whether the new bet will attract much national interest and handle – the opening-day pool was just $5,465, with a $2,049 carryover to Friday – but the closing-day pool should be a good one because of the mandatory payout: Any carryover, and the entire net pool, will be paid out April 1 whether zero or 100 people pick five. New Yorkers could spend the winter playing the bet and then be excluded from participating on the day of the payout.
That was what almost happened last year with the final day of Gulfstream’s Rainbow Six, a 10-cent, six-race version of the Black Gold 5. Once again Gulfstream’s closing day is scheduled for Easter Sunday this year, which is April 8. Last year, because New York and Kentucky bettors would not be able to play it on Sunday, Gulfstream moved the mandatory-payout day to Saturday, which was an improvement but still left Easter-deprived horseplayers on the outside of playing a one-day mandatory-payout pool on Easter Sunday.
Every racing entity in the state is in favor of racing on Palm and Easter Sundays, and no one can argue with a straight face that lotto and slots are okay on those occasions but racing horses would be sinful. Still, no politician has been willing to sponsor a change, fearful of angering a tiny number of religious zealots who would accuse of them launching a War on Palm Sunday.
Perhaps, though, the racino situation and the growth of these national jackpot bets are enough to move the argument outside of religious territory. The prohibitions on those two Sundays stems from a time when racing was the only legal form of gambling in New York, and they make no common or legal sense in an era of always-open lotteries and racinos. If they can’t see that, perhaps the legislators can see that continuing these bans will only encourage more New Yorkers to open out-of-state betting accounts, shipping money out of state instead of through the New York tracks and OTB’s.
That reduces it to a pretty simple proposition: The Aqueduct racino was opened to step the exodus of local casino-betting betting dollars to neighboring states. How about opening the Aqueduct racetrack those two Sunday to do the same?
http://streetcornerconservative.com/category/the-nassau-county-mangano-kaiman-watch/
Ed “fights” the wage freeze but if it were lifted the required County property tax increase would make Suozzi (remember him?) look like a piker and we would beg to have it re-imposed. Plus, Kaiman writes an essay on NIFA on the math section of the County SAT without a single number. This thing will blow up some time but we’ll all be on OTB payroll by then trying to get a piece of VLT vendor action.
HI-
Thanks for
the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy,
if you give me a mailing address.
Claude
Solnik
(631)
913-4244
Long
Island
Business News
2150
Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI
Confidential > Stop
scratching on holidays
Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
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