MARKET WATCH COLUMNIST
“When borrowing goes bad”, Ellis Henican Column, Newsday, December 11, 2011
What’s another half-billion among friends?
With Nassau County proposing to borrow a fresh $450 million to pay for certain expenses, perhaps it’s time for a brief budget-theory review.
Wait. Stick with me here. I know budgets can be boring. And budgetary theory sounds even worse. But to paraphrase what Pericles said about politics and Leon Trotsky said about war, “You may not be interested in budgets, but budgets are interested in you.”
Debt is not always a bad thing. It allows us to buy stuff we can’t afford to pay cash for and spread the payments into the future.
I didn’t pay cash for my home, and I’m hoping to live there for many years to come. That last part is key: Borrowing for long-term governmental projects — building roads, laying sewers, maybe even constructing sports stadiums now and then — can make fiscal sense if it’s done with thought and diligence.
But borrowing just to get the county balance sheet through the day, the week or the year? Any budget expert will tell you that’s almost always a bad idea.
Four years later, the money will all be gone, spent on court judgments, tax refunds and who knows what else. The county will have nothing permanent to show — no new roads, no new sewers, not even a new stadium. And on into the future, those bond payments will keep coming due, pinching future taxpayers and requiring even deeper cuts.
No wonder the seven members of the Nassau Interim Finance Authority, the county’s fiscal baby-sitter, seemed to hold their noses while voting to approve Ed Mangano’s 2012 budget and that fresh $450-million hole.
Even the five voting yes appeared to understand: New York’s wealthiest county was delaying the tough stuff again.
ONLY MONEY:
1. Robbing Plandome to pay Port Washington.
2. $450 million for your thoughts.
3. Taxpayer money makes the world go ’round.
4. Neither a Mangano nor a Suozzi be.
5. Laughing all the way to the County Office Building in Mineola.
THE NEWS IN SONG:
Never enough:
“Money (That’s What I Want)”
The Flying Lizards
ASKED AND UNANSWERED:
Would YOU lend Nassau County $450 million?…Which Long Island pols are NOT claiming credit for that $101.6 million in economic-development aid from Albany? It’s a much shorter list than those who are…Now that Ed 
Mangano’s push to privatize LI Bus has hit a major speed bump, wouldn’t this be a good time to review the whole idea? Could it be that, compared to these out-of-town transit vendors, the MTA all of a sudden isn’t looking so bad?…Is alarmist real-estate analyst Keith Jurow being way too negative – or just telling the hard 
truth – when he calls the LI housing market “a disaster waiting to happen”? Writes Jurow: “Nearly everyone who bought since the summer of 2003 owns a home worth less than they paid for it. My sense is that many of them have no idea.”…What’s a hungry 7 foot, 305-pounder eat for lunch in Greenvale? Pizza AND spaghetti AND meatballs at Abeetza Pizza, if his nickname’s Shaq…When was the last time you got to say happy birthday to someone who just turned 106? So join my “many happy returns” to Martha Lewis of Port Jefferson Station (via Germany, Russia, Japan, Canada, Washington Heights and Port Jefferson). Why stop now, Mrs. L?
LONG ISLANDER OF THE WEEK:
Ray Bertolino
Personal, thoughtful, unscripted conversation — it’s the rarest thing on modern radio. Far from the AM shouters and the FM morning zoos, Ray Bertolino has conducted hundreds of his civilized “Conversations” on Nassau 
Community College’s WHPC / 90.3 FM (online at ncc.edu/whpc). A Muttontown native and Mineola resident known for his probing interview style and old-fashioned patience, Bertolino has hosted an amazingly diverse guest lineup: Novelist Nelson DeMille, songwriter Jimmy Webb, adman Jerry Della Femina, sportscasting legend Bob Wolff, pop star Neil Sedaka, talk host Dick Cavett and, this week (Sunday at 10 p.m., Monday at 12:30 p.m., Tuesday at 4 p.m.), cabaret icon Michael Feinstein. No matter how famous, they all understand: Smart conversation’s a rare commodity on the radio.
E-mail ellis@henican.com
Follow him at twitter.com/henican
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It will be my pleasure to explain my views. I don’t believe that being in a financial budget concern is a happy moment for any of us. Because this happens to us out here at times, it is no excuse but we seem to function with it and eventually we improve. Admittedly, there is a modicum of pain this time and complication with oversight. When I say rocking the boat, I meant that sometimes when you try to forcefully fix something like this when seamlessly may be a better course, we will astoundingly manage to preserve the lifestyle we have come to love. With no dispersion on Queens,property taxes are much lower there and they do not need to pay for that boat.
Jay, who’s gonna pay for that boat you don’t want to rock?
I have been out here with my family since 1986 and since then like all Nassau County residents I was aware of many budget problem years. The way I feel could be the way many Long Islanders feel. I came from New York City where the crime was rampant and I could not park me car. Broadway looked like a 1956 newsreel because people never discarded their clothes from way back. Beggars never left me alone. Summers we had to travel somewhere in super heavy traffic to do something. You know what I am going to say. We have a paradise out here in tough financial condition. To retain what we have, we are patient. Let’s not rock the boat, we will solve everything.