Former Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY), who is running to replace expelled former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) in New York’s Third Congressional District, advocated against significant increases in police officer contracts and sought contract concessions from officers during his time as a local official in Nassau County in the early-mid 2000s, according to reports from the time.
Suozzi had earned the endorsement of the Police Benevolent Association (PBA) while running for his first term as county executive in 2001, but he “sought contract concessions from the police” soon after he assumed office in 2002, the New York Times previously reported.
The proposal also came after Suozzi, serving as Glen Cove mayor in 2000, had sought to combat substantial police contract hikes, as the Times noted in another story. The move as a newly minted county executive triggered a years-long war with the PBA of Nassau County, headed up at the time by President Gary DelaRaba.
Ultimately, in 2003, an agreement was reached between the county and the union through arbitration that ran through 2006, which “raised base salaries but took away one paid holiday — Flag Day — and changed the starting time for night-differential pay to 3 p.m. from 11 a.m,” per the Times. The county saw its police force dwindle from 2,800 in 2001 to 2,600 in 2005.
During Suozzi’s reelection bid in 2005, the PBA poured $500,000 into an anti-Suozzi campaign, a significant spend in a county-level race even by today’s standards. The campaign sought to harm Suozzi by targeting two of his county legislator allies, former Legislators David Meijas and Jeff Toback, per the Times.
Part of the initiative included roughly 12 different forms of campaign fliers and other advertisements hitting the men and Suozzi “over budget cuts that the union says have endangered public safety,” the Times noted. At the time, Democrats held a thin majority in the legislature that would have been compromised with the loss of a single seat, so if Meijas or Toback were ousted, it threatened to weaken Suozzi’s power. The PBA also backed his Republican challenger, Greg Peterson.
Toback said the PBA’s advertisements backing then-Nassau District Attorney Denis Dillon (R) opposed the message the PBA promoted in Dillon’s reelection campaign.
In response, county Democrats filed a lawsuit against the union on allegations of failure to disclose spending reports, therefore breaking campaign finance laws. A Mineola Supreme Court justice ruled that the PBA did break finance laws in crafting television ads and ordered the PBA to disclose its expenditures.
The bad blood between Suozzi and the PBA continued after his reelection. In March 2006, the PBA filed suit against Nassau County, alleging that Suozzi halted the pay awarded through arbitration to six union bosses, including DelaRaba, to exact retribution for their efforts to hurt his reelection bid, the Times noted.
That arbitration ruling from December 2004 had awarded back pay to the officials “for lost opportunities for overtime, promotions and outside employment,” an article from local Long Island news outlet Newsday reported in 2005.
“Suozzi did not object to the decision until October 2005 after the PBA endorsed his opponent. He then called the award ‘abusive’ and in November ordered the payment stopped,” the outlet noted on March 20, 2007.
“I have the highest respect and admiration for our police officers. My problem is with the union bosses,” Suozzi said of the situation, per the New York Times.
In its 2007 report, Newsday noted that Suozzi proposed a settlement to the lawsuit that was adopted in an emergency vote from the legislature. It came after Suozzi’s taped deposition before lawyers for the union. The settlement resulted in the six union bosses receiving nearly $300,000 in back pay and their future payments from arbitration restored. Some $78,500 in back pay went to DelaRaba as a result of the settlement.
The case “would have exposed the taxpayers to millions in legal fees, not only ours, but the PBA’s as well,” Suozzi said in a statement at the time.
