Bergin And Trotta Tell Non-Profits To Reduce Salaries Or We Will Reduce Funding

Steve Flotteron (LD 11), Catherine Stark (LD1, Trish Bergin (LD 10, Rob Trotta (LD 13), Dominick S. Thorne (LD7)How Suffolk County funds non-profit organizations may soon change. Legislators Bergin and Trotta are proposing to limit funding to non-profit contract agencies that pay salaries deemed “exorbitant” by the legislators. 

“These agencies set their own salaries, but when they seek County assistance to fund their administrative expenses rather than use those resources towards the programs benefitting our community, it is not fair to the tax-payer.” Said Suffolk County Legislator Trish Bergin.

Standing between two charts that displayed CEO salaries and the dollar amounts provided to those non-profits by the County Legislators Catherine Stark (LD1), Dominick S. Thorne (LD 7), Trish Bergin (LD 10), Steve Flotteron (LD 11), Robert Trotta (LD 13) called for amending Chapter 189 of Suffolk County Code by placing restrictions on administrative expenses of contract agencies.

If adopted: No contract agency shall be eligible for funding by the County of Suffolk from County funds in any fiscal year where any employee, officer, director, or member of the contract agency received a salary in the previous year more significant than the budgeted salary for the governor of the State of New York for that year as determined by the County Department of Audit and Control.

 “It is time to reign in the out of control, not-for-profit executives who are making more than the Governor and the people they serve live in poverty.” Said Suffolk County Legislator Rob Trotta.  

Legislator Bergin said she anticipates more legislators supporting the legislation and implied that an underlying cause of high salaries in the non-profit sector is the migration of personnel from county government into the sector.