Rush Transcipt: Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman is Guest on LI News Radio With Jay Oliver

For Immediate Release 

June 25, 2018
Contact: County Executive Press Office
631-853-4000 | Press.Office@suffolkcountyny.gov  


Earlier today, Deputy County Executive Jon Kaiman was a guest on LI News Radio with Jay Oliver. A transcript of the interview is available below.

Jay Oliver:  Jon, how are you?

Jon Kaiman:  I’m good Jay, how are you doing this morning.

Jay Oliver:  I’m doing well, alright let’s get into this whole thing. I know there was a lot of concern last week. Legislators, the County Executive, parents are now somewhat concerned regarding this app that has certainly come into play would provide every K through 12 school district in the County of Suffolk access to the Rave Panic Mobile Application. It is designed to allow businesses, district schools and what not to summon emergency services. Allows a lot of things happening. So Jon, give us an idea here because, we’ll talk about the app in a second, was a lot of back and forth between the legislature and County Executive projects. We had Cilmi on last week on the accusations of being out of line and trying to bundle projects all across rather than list them separately there and of course one of those things was the RAVE app, give us an idea as far as the initial happening there. Why so much has caused an alarm here.

Jon Kaiman:  So there are obviously two issues here. One is the process by which the county legislature and Suffolk County itself proves capital expenditure.  In other words, how does it approve payment for projects that the legislature authorizes? But the other issue ultimately is the benefit of this particular app which is a significant piece or larger strategy to try to help protect our kids, our teachers, our administrators, people in schools, our police, our first responders, you know, anything that goes towards that has to be taken seriously and looked back and analyzed and invested. I think it’s a worthy investment but that what this issue really is whether or not this whole issue of what’s been called bundling is or should be as controversial as it’s being made out to be. 55 out of 57 counties in NYS use a process called bundling because they put projects together, they put resolutions together to fund. So what happens is this, with the project in front of the legislature it goes before a committee, the committee takes a vote on it, they approve it, at some points it gets before the legislature, the legislature then votes on whether or not to approve a particular project. You know there’s a road going through some part of a community it needs $3 million dollars, legislature votes for it. There’s an improvement to the jail, every so often you need to rebuild part of the structure, you need to buy new equipment, you need to do whatever is necessary to make sure the place is safe. Update it within federal law, within state law, etc. And so if the legislature passes a resolution, which they’ve done time and time again to make some investment in some project at some point, they have to then to vote to pay for it. And what we’ve been doing in Suffolk County and have been doing for years and years and years is that the legislature has a vote on a particular project, maybe it’s a road, multi-road structure, whatever it is, in the resolution it says this money is going to be paid for through a bond because when you pay for something, when government invest dollars in something that’s going to last for a number of years, the appropriate way to pay for that is over a number of years. So the single taxpayer, taxpayer that is paying for this is paying for it over the years of the use of the life of that investment.

So if it’s a road, the roads going to last ten years, you pay for it over ten years. So that way if tax payers who live there for one year are paying for it for one year, the taxpayer who’s lived there for ten years pays for it over ten years. That’s called bonding, it’s part of the capital project, that’s why we do it that way. That’s the appropriate way for government to spend its money so that its fair and its considered a standard practice. So when we put a resolution to approve that road the legislature, republican democrats vote for that road and its 18 to nothing or 16 to 2 or some vast majority that people voted for it then goes on to a final vote at some later point. And that final vote is to pay for the funding through a capital project. So they approve the project itself and then what we do is saying ok, here’s a budget project that you approved, you approved project A, you approved project B, you approved project C, why don’t we then later on have just one vote on A, B and C together? You approved every project, you’re taking credit for it, you’re going back to your constituents bragging about voting for it. You’re telling people you support it, you’re giving the impression that this is an important government investment, you’re saying that to constituents but then when it comes to the funding of it, which is in the individual resolution anyway, you vote against it so that way you can disrupt government undermine the operation but then say someone isn’t running government properly, things are in chaos. Jay Oliver goes on his radio show saying look at the chaos, what’s going on out there, they’re not fixing their roads, they’re not fixing their buildings, they’re not doing it properly, they don’t even know what they’re doing. Because it-

Jay Oliver:  All right Jon, let me ask you something though, let me ask you a question though. I understand what you’re saying but can’t you make the case, as far as what happened last week can, making the case here now, is if you’re trying to have lets say thirty projects going through at this particular caucus I mean can you make the case though that they should be done separately? I mean lets face it for the last forty years this has been procedure. Why kind of, you can kind of make a point that ‘listen’ maybe the County Executive is trying to pressure everyone? Trying to get all of these projects into two resolutions rather than deal with them individually. I mean that’s been the case for the past four decades, why change now in that protocol? 

Jon Kaiman:  One of the things I think that is clear about government is that it needs to be run more like a business at times, it needs to be run efficiently, it needs to choose best practices, it needs to come into the modern era at times. Just because we’ve done something for forty years doesn’t mean it’s a proper, appropriate, efficient, effective way to do it and one of the things the County Executive is doing, he said it in his State of the County last year, he said it this year, he has a team of talented people who are working government, analyzing and accessing what other governments do throughout the state, throughout the country, looking for best practices. How are governments run and how should they be run and Suffolk County is unique, as every county has individual character and we certainly appreciate that but here’s a process where 55 out of 57 counties in New York State have evolved into doing it in a particular way. You do that so that you don’t get stuck in some old time rut because this is the way we used to do it. You do that so you can’t politicize every single capital vote and end up wasting money.

You know the reason governments evolving into this newer bundling plan, which is not new, it's been done for 10, 20, 30 years, it's just Suffolk County has not done it, that’s correct. But the reason you do it is so you don’t end up politicking every single vote, and when you politicize every vote, when every single vote has to be done individually that means you have to bargain you have to make a deal.  You have to make a back door deal for every single vote.  So Mr. Legislator I will vote for your project, your capital project in your district if you vote for mine and you know what, I’ll add a few things we’ll spend a little bit more money here, we’ll make this little door, bargains with each other. And what happens is the taxpayer loses because what happens is you end up spending more money. Good projects don’t get done because you can’t make that deal, other projects might get more money than they should or different twists and turns. So the goal is to de-politicize the process. Put everything we’ve approved in one bundle, vote for one. The one that we talked about, the one that you were talking about the past week, it was three things in the bundle. It was two improvements to the county jail that need to be made so the county jail can be consistent with the federal laws so that our law enforcement officers in the county jail can be kept safe, so the structures are safe and that what ever investment used to be made is made. Those two projects passed the legislature, there are 18 members of the legislature, those two projects passed 18-0, every legislator, Democrat and Republican all believe that these projects are worthy and important investments to be made. The third project was the RAVE button. RAVE button was this application that schools, teachers and administrators and public employees by the way, are going to be able to use if there’s a crisis using smart technology so that they can then benefit from all the universal techniques that presently being used in active shooter situations. To make them safe, to make our law enforcement safer. That passed 16-0. So we have three resolutions that passed 16-0, 18-0, 18-0. It was 16-0, two people abstained. So putting those together after they were all voted for individually by the legislature, passed 16, 18, and 18 to zero and the County Executive bundled them into one. The legislature then goes on this whole intensive argument ‘we’re going to vote against this if you separate it, we would’ve voted for it.’ Well why do we separate, you’ve already voted for it, we don’t have to have separate bonding resolutions. Ultimately when we use our public procurement process or lawyers to do the bond resolutions, instead of doing 130, 140 a year, we’ll be doing 10, 15, 20.