Schnirman fundraises before and after Long Beach report

The timing of Jack Schnirman's  fundraising email seemed a bit embarrassing at first.

On Wednesday, Nov. 20, his campaign committee sent out an invitation to  join Schnirman, the former Long Beach city manager, at a New Year's celebration Jan. 9 at the Garden City Hotel. Tickets range from $100 to $10,000. "We're throwing a party early next year to celebrate and support our favorite comptroller," the email said.


On Friday, the Long Beach City Council released a draft response to a state audit critical of excessive termination and "drawdown" payments made to former employees, including Schnirman.

As the newly elected county comptroller,  Schnirman, a Democrat, took county office on Jan. 1, 2018 after receiving $108,000 in taxpayer money from Democrat-controlled Long Beach for unused leave time--nearly $53,000 more than allowed by city code or Schnirman's own employment contract.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli pointed this out in a draft audit released at the end of August, more than a year after angry Long Beach residents, the LiHerald and Newsday had calculated the same overpayment.  Only after fellow Democrat DiNapoli, who had endorsed Schnirman's county run, reported that Schnirman received $52,780 more than allowed by code or contract, did Schnirman return the excess payment.


After weeks of dithering, the City Council this month finally hired its own counsel to reply to the comptroller's report, which also found nine other current and former Long Beach mostly management employees had been paid too much money for unused vacation and sick days from 2017 to 2018. City staff said the payments were based on unwritten "past practices."

Without knowledge or approval of the city council, city management more than a year ago hired former prosecutor Anthony Capozzolo to investigate the separation payments. Without input or review by the city council, Capozzolo responded to the comptroller's audit in September.  He also warned any attempt to recoup the overpayments from essentially the same people who hired him "may be a fool's errand."


Last month, the city council rescinded Capozzolo's response and directed the law firm of Ingerham Smith to issue a new response Friday.

Partner John Gross' draft report, posted online Friday morning,  smacked Schnirman and his management team.

Although Gross didn't name names, he was clearly referring to Schnirman in the  first sentence of a section titled, "City Management's Conflict of Interest."

He wrote: "City Manager A's entitlement to sick and vacation time is set forth in his Employment Agreement, which is the controlling document here."


Finally! Some common sense. No unwritten "past practices" explanation.  A contract is a contract. Especially a contract like Schnirman's that set payout limits long after the alleged past practices began.

Gross' draft report also questioned payouts to former Corporation Counsel and former Acting City Manager Rob Agostisi, though again Agostisi wasn't named.

The report noted that Long Beach is not required to indemnify or defend employees accused of crimes. To date,  no charges have resulted from various state and federal investigations.

But city staff on Friday morning, objected to the report. Acting City Manager John Mirando, who had assured the state comptroller in  September that Capozzolo's response was the official city's response,
cited "inaccuracies and omissions" in Gross' draft report, according to Newsday.


A few hours later, on Friday afternoon, the City Council approved a new slimmed-down version of the Gross report that eliminated the entire section about "city management's conflicts of interest," as well as references to indemnification and "faithless servant" policies.

No wonder then that today, two days later, Schnirman sent out yet another email seeking contributions and boasting of his accomplishments as comptroller, He also explained what a comptroller does:

"We watch out for your money by closely monitoring the county's finances, and auditing agencies throughout the county government to root out waste, fraud and inefficiency.

Not embarrassing at all.

Here are the emails:

From: Team Schnirman <info@jackfornassau.com>
Sent: Wednesday, November 20, 2019 4:43 PM

We’re throwing a party early next year to celebrate and support our favorite Comptroller, and we wanted to make sure you were one of the first to know. Check out the full details below: So,-- should we save you a spot? There’s no one we’d rather kick off the new year with, so grab your spot now!   RSVP -- Team Schnirman  DONATE From: Jack Schnirman <info@jackfornassau.com> Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2019 3:38 AM To: Subject: Do you know what comptrolling means to me I know we email you a lot about what we’re up to in the Comptroller’s Office. Nearly two years into the job, we’ve made some great progress on modernizing how this office operates. But I still get one question a lot -- one you might even be asking yourself -- what is a comptroller, and what do they do? So, before we dive even deeper into the weeds, I wanted to get back to basics to make sure we’re all on the same page: To put it simply, there are two parts that define what this office means to me: 1) Watching out for your money, so that 2) We can improve the Nassau County services that you care about. you might be asking, “Well, how do you do that?” Check out my new video to find out more! We watch out for your money by closely monitoring the county’s finances, and auditing agencies throughout the county government to root out waste, fraud, and inefficiency. On top of that, we’re modernizing our operation so that our findings are more accessible to all. You can track our findings through the recently-launched Comptroller’s Scorecard on Fiscal Health. Our new Open Nassau platform has up-to-date information on county spending. We are constantly improving and collaborating with folks all across the county to engage our communities with this information and gather more input to share with policymakers. If you have any suggestions, drop us a line at ReportItReformIt@nassaucountyny.gov.