The ink isn't dry yet on November's election results for Mayor of Glen Cove and incumbent Mayor Ralph Suozzi is unable to keep his disregard for his own constituents in check until next week's inauguration. The mayor's latest faux pas may very well portend a two-year nightmare for the city and its taxpayers. The issue? Dec. 18's vote to give away a $52 million city asset - Glen Cove's sewer treatment plant - to Nassau County.

The voters - and particularly the registered voters who didn't show up to cast their ballots - are about to get a hard lesson in just why they may have made an egregious error in returning this mayor to continue what clearly appears to be incompetence run amok in governing a city teetering on the edge of financial ruin. To paraphrase the old Ronald Reagan quip, "Well, there he goes again."

Two weeks ago, this mayor and a puppet-like city council, save only for Michael Norman, an honorable person who chose not to run for re-election, voted at a "special meeting" to transfer Glen Cove's sewage treatment plant to the county because the mayor's first cousin, County Executive Tom Suozzi, has his own plan for it.

The real question that taxpayers should be asking is this: Does anyone seriously believe that Tom Suozzi would push as hard as he has been for the county to take over a sewer treatment plant that loses money? Anyone who knows Mr. Suozzi is unlikely to reach that conclusion. He does not exhibit a history of taking initiatives which are not in the interests of furthering his own political career. Then why, one might ask, is he so hot to get the county's hands on Glen Cove's $52 million treatment facility which Cousin Ralph claims to be a $3.5 million dollar drain on Glen Cove's budget? That answer seems all too obvious. Consider this picture:

Ralph Suozzi was just re-elected to another two-year term as Glen Cove's mayor. He ran his campaign on his "Glen Cove Voters" party line.

No one disputes that his first cousin, the county executive, played a crucial role in assuring that Ralph Suozzi also got the Democratic line on the ballot in addition to his Glen Cove Voters line - notwithstanding Ralph's apparent rejection of Democratic support.

Without ever acknowledging himself as a Democrat (indeed, no one can recall a single Democratic sign for Ralph appearing anywhere in the city), Ralph Suozzi won re-election handily. However, something on the order of 88 percent of the votes cast for him came on . . . yep, you got it . . . the Democratic line. Absent that Democratic support and the machine politics behind it, he would have lost handily.

Just before the election, the proposal to turn over Glen Cove's sewage treatment plant hit the news. By taking over the plant and paying nothing for it except through an abatement of future sewer charges to the residents of the City for a limited period of time, County Executive Tom Suozzi will be able to lay claim to having stripped Glen Cove of a $52 million asset without laying out a dime of county money. He can then turn the facility profitable by hooking up other communities to the plant and charging them lots of sewer taxes. That way, every time a toilet flushes in Brookville or Glen Head or Locust Valley, it'll flow through Glen Cove and the only sound you will hear is the "kuh-ching, kuh-ching" of the Nassau County cash register. Those will be fees that could have been charged by Glen Cove if it had a leader with the most basic skill and ability to figure out how to turn the city's sewage treatment plant profitable - a veritable no-brainer given the fact that the plant currently operates at half capacity and every surrounding community has no sewers.

In the last election cycle, when it became evident that any proposal to turn over the sewage treatment plant to Nassau County for free was just too much of a political hot potato to leave on the table, Ralph Suozzi dropped it- just like the hot potato it was.

Then, on Dec. 18, little more than a month after his re-election and right in the middle of the holiday season when he thought no one was watching, Ralph Suozzi, and all of his city council members but one, Mr. Norman, mysteriously voted in under five minutes, at a hastily called city council special meeting, to put the proposal back on the table. They proceeded to make what appears to be nothing short of a charitable gift of the city's $52 million asset to Cousin Tom's county government. In exchange for this newly enacted City Welfare-to-County Program, Glen Cove's residents will allegedly get free sewage treatment services for 15 years. After that, Glen Cove's children and grandchildren can start paying the county for the use of the plant their parents and grandparents gave up for free.

Here's the beauty of this whole elegant scheme: Have you ever wondered why Glen Cove residents pay far, far more for their water than any surrounding community? The answer is simple. Years ago, when it was the Republicans who were then sticking it to the city, they figured out that they could sell water at a profit and avoid raising taxes to get more revenues. They raised water rates through the roof. And that profit can be used to offset the cost of treating sewerage. So the real fact of the matter is that Glen Cove's taxpayers are already paying for sewers through their water charges, and now they're going to give the plant away because the mayor claims it loses money. The county will reap the profit from the sewage treatment plant and the city will be able to use its water department surplus to hide some other political boondoggle. Neat, huh?

If the Democratic-controlled County Legislature approves this deal, then (a) Glen Cove's taxpayers will have given up a $50+ million dollar asset, (b) Ralph Suozzi will ask to be re-elected claiming that he got the cost of running the sewage treatment plant off his books, (c) Tom Suozzi will ask voters to elect him to higher office because he will claim once again, "I can do it because I've done it," this time referring to his skill in conning Glen Cove citizens out of potentially huge revenues they could have kept for themselves, and (d) more likely than not, the voters will once again line up like sheep and vote to advance the political careers of these people who continue to abuse their own constituents with deals like this.

Well, folks, that's politics - or in this case, maybe it's just family business. One thing's for sure, however. If you don't vote, and you don't pay attention, and you don't get involved, and you don't keep 'em honest, this is the kind of government you get. It runs from City Hall through Mineola all the way up to the State House in Albany and then right on to the White House. Seems like nobody cares.

Michael A. Levy