Nassau Inspector General: So far, No public reports for 2022

From the Nassau Inspector General website, as of April 2

Nassau County Democrats have pushed for the reappointment of Inspector General Jodi Franzese after her four-year-term expired in December.

But the Republican majority on the county legislature has balked. Presiding Officer Rich Nicolello (R-New Hyde Park) told Newsday that Franzese would serve as a holdover this year, leaving it up to the new legislature elected in November to decide if she should continue in her job.

So maybe, Franzese has retaliated against the delay with a work slowdown of sorts.

She hasn't issued her charter-required annual report for 2022, which is supposed to be published and posted on her website before March 31.

In fact, there are no public reports posted on the site for all of 2022.

And that leaves the public in the dark as to what their $165,000-a-year inspector general, with a staff of eight and an office budget of more than $1 million, has been up to for the past year.

Democrats had pressed and lobbied for an "independent" inspector general since they learned in 2015 that former State Senate leader Dean Skelos, a Rockville Centre Republican, had lobbied behind the scenes for Nassau to hire a company that employed his son. Skelos eventually served time on corruption charges, that included the Nassau contract.

Republicans were not so enthusiastic about hiring someone to oversee procurement, figuring that was the job of their highly paid staff and administrators.

They didn't agree to create the inspector general's office until the end of 2017, when Republican County Executive Ed Mangano left office under a federal indictment for corruption and was eventually convicted. Then it took a year for Democrats and Republicans to agree on Franzese and hire her for the job while Democratic County Executive Laura Curran was in office.

Though Franzese hasn't posted any public reports for 2022, she raised Republican hackles last year when she cautiously questioned a proposal by current county executive, Republican Bruce Blakeman, to settle an ongoing lawsuit by giving longtime  Dover Gourmet concessionaire Bruce Yamali a five- to ten-year lease to provide food and concession services at most county parks and beaches.

Yamali had run afoul of Curran but is a favored Republican host and restaurateur.

Franzese questioned the lack of competition in the Yamali proposal , but county insiders complained she was overstepping her authority by delving into legal settlements instead of sticking to her mission of examining procurement.

Still Blakeman subsequently rebid the lease -- which Yamali won.

In 2021, Franzese' complaints about the lack of competitive bids stopped a proposed lease extension to operate the Carltun in the Park restaurant in Eisenhower Park. In this case, the Democratic Curran administration had proposed the extension.

But the longtime Carltun leaseholder was Anthony Capetola, a Republican lawyer who figured prominently in Republican politics for decades. Last year, the lease went to a new operator.

In 2020, Franzese questioned the "business integrity" of a vendor involved in the construction of the county's new family court and matrimonial center in Garden City.

Now that's a debacle that deserves attention.

Former Nassau County Social Services Building

The project began in the mid-2000s under former Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi. It continued through the Mangano and Curran administrations and still is not completed.

It was the county's former social services building, on the south end of the courthouse complex on Old Country Road. It was deteriorated, vermin and mold infested.

Suozzi moved the social services staff to Mitchel Field while putting probation into trailers. He first talked about selling the property for condominiums. But affordable housing activists and Garden City zoning obstacles ended that idea and the plan was born to create a new home there for Family Court, which was operating out of a deteriorated, vermin and mold-infested building in Westbury.

That has been the plan ever since. Three years ago, Newsday said the projected cost was $214.6 million. Bet it costs more now.

Construction began in 2013, with completion now projected later this year. That's ten years in construction, if the building is in fact finished.

In comparison the county built a spanking new state-of-the art police academy for about $60 million in three years. It opened in Oct. 2021.

Franzese said in her 2021 report that she was monitoring the progress of the Family Court and matrimonial center project. Presumably, her findings will be in the 2022 annual report.

Meanwhile Nassau's families and children are still waiting.