Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine has proposed a $4 billion budget for 2025, raising spending by about 3.7% from the current $3.9 billion budget.
The proposed budget will address staffing shortages, changes in the county’s cybersecurity and information technology infrastructure, and rising health care costs. Romaine also hopes to hire an additional 225 police officers.
“This fiscally responsible budget addresses the critical needs of our county and ensures the safer and more affordable Suffolk that all residents deserve,” Romaine said in a statement.
Under the proposed budget, homeowners would pay an average of about $36 more per year. Homeowners who live in the five western towns and pay into the police fund (Babylon, Brookhaven, Huntington, Islip and Smithtown) will see an increase of about $49 per year. Towns in the eastern end of the county will have to pay an average increase of around $4.60 per year.
The new budget accounts for 200 additional police officers, 30 new deputy sheriff positions and 100 corrections officers for the next year. It will also allow room for increased staffing for the county’s Cold Case Unit, where investigators work closely alongside the police department to review hundreds of unsolved homicides.
The budget’s improvement to the county’s IT infrastructure is intended to address major changes needed for recovery from the 2022 cyber attack that crippled most of the county government’s operations. The cyber attack shut down the county’s main website for five months, exposing the information of about 500,000 people. The attack also shut down the county’s phone and email systems. Romaine’s budget will allow funding for the employment of a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and a virtual CISO for redundancy and additional cyber security.
The Suffolk County Legislature has until Nov. 6 to adopt the budget.
