Curran touts accomplishments in 16-page circular (and related items)

                                                                                          

Outgoing Democratic County Executive Laura Curran last week emailed staff a 16-page illustrated on-line booklet of her administration's accomplishments.

The last Democratic county executive -- Tom Suozzi -- did the same thing before he left office at the end of 2009. He produced a glossy printed booklet listing his accomplishments.

It's not clear if Curran's online booklet will also come in a printed version.

Her "legacy" is divided into different sections:  Covid, Public Safety, Roads & Infrastructure, Veterans, Parks, Budget, Transparency and Diversity and Inclusion. And all are packed with pictures.

Let's go off on a tangent about the Public Safety section:

Curran features the October opening of Nassau's new police academy,  called David S. Mack Center for Training and Intelligence, on the Nassau Community College Campus.

Few people remember, but Bruce Blakeman, the Republican who defeated Curran in November, first proposed the Nassau police academy be located at Nassau Community College when he was presiding officer of the then-new county legislature from 1996 through 1999.

The academy had been in temporary quarters for decades and was looking for a new home in 1996.

Blakeman said the college campus was the right place for a police academy -- amid all the old military buildings at the former Mitchel Field air base.

Of course, Nassau Community College back then was thought to be located in Uniondale. Then, despite protests from Uniondale activists, some college officials insisted it was actually in East Garden City. Now the college simply lists its address in Garden City -- even though its buildings haven't moved. Apparently "Garden City"  is a more upscale address.

But Blakeman's idea didn't materialize while he was part of county government. The police academy moved from an empty East Williston school to the grounds of the Nassau jail to an old school in Massapequa.

In 2015, then Republican County Executive Ed Mangano announced plans to begin construction of a new $40 million "state of the art" police academy training center on the community college campus.

Actual construction began in May 2019. Final cost of the new building, financed in part with private funds raised by the Nassau police foundation, was $56 million, Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said at its opening.

Nobody mentioned that the building appears to have been done well without the services of a $500,000 "integrity monitor" that the Curran administration insisted in 2019 was necessary to keep the project, then estimated to cost $50 million, on track and without corruption.

Curran proposed hiring Exiger LLC  for $499,000 in May 2019 without publicly disclosing  to the county legislature that her administration began negotiating with the technology research company soon after she took office a  year earlier or that high-ranking county officials had numerous associations with the firm's principals.

Curran withdrew the proposed contract after county legislators questioned the selection process and whether the company had received preferential treatment.

Curran officials and Exiger denied any impropriety.  The administration never resubmitted the contract.

Here is another page from Curran's Legacy.

In 2019, the county defended the lack of public disclosure of links to Exiger because there are no legal requirement that county officials disclose past associations with vendor principals unless they have current working or monetary relationships.

There still are no rules requiring such disclosure.

And while Curran is on her way out, here is Blakeman today in the rotunda of the County Executive and Legislative building, probably keeping an eye on the redecorating now under way in the executive suite.