PATRICK (MIKE) MCKENNA, is an attorney in private practice for more than 36 years and is a member of the New York State and Florida Bars. Mike serves on numerous labor and commercial mediation and arbitration panels in New York and Florida. Since 1999, Mike has served on the federal mediation panel for the United States District Court of the Eastern District of New York and has resolved scores of cases primarily in the employment and labor field. He has also served on the Arbitration Panel of the Nassau County District Court since 1980 and has issued hundreds of awards.
Until recently becoming a full-time neutral, Mike was an active litigator having represented hundreds of employees in FLSA, Title VII, ADEA, ADA, Section 1983, and ERISA actions in federal court. Mike has also represented both public and private sector employers and unions in arbitration proceedings involving contract interpretation and disciplinary matters.
For more than 20 years, Mike has served as corporation counsel to various municipalities, including the Nassau County Bridge Authority, and the Villages of Valley Stream and Malverne where he was the lead labor negotiator in collective bargaining agreements and the principal advocate in grievance, arbitration, and Section 75 proceedings. He served under four mayors including the first female mayor of Malverne and the first female mayor of Valley Stream.
While serving as the attorney for the Village of Valley Stream, Mike formulated creative solutions that were instrumental in reconciling the divergent interests of the developers, the residents, and the village building department on a number of complex zoning and land use projects.
Mike is a graduate of Buffalo Law School (1976), and has a M.A. degree in American Government and Politics from George Washington University (1975), and a B.A. degree in Government from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1970). He is a former Adjunct Instructor in Business Law at Nassau County Community College and has served on various corporate and not for profit boards.