Brad,
The problem isn't the cost of maintaining the Black as much as it is the other four courses.
After the success of the Black in 2002 the public began putting pressure on the State to bring the other course's up to the same standard. Bethpage also began a successful push to get the Red course into much better shape and to see it ranked highly which it now is among public courses. They rebuilt numbers of bunkers and tees on the Green course and had actually planned going course-by-course to get the other three (Green, Blue, Yellow) at least on the level of the Red.
So cutting the maintenance expenses for the Park meant stopping some programs planned for and others already in place while continuing expenditures on the other courses already begun. Each course had to undergo severe cuts. In addition to this are the problems the budget crisis has caused to the OTHER Long Island parks with golf courses. At each one of them the last two years have seen their particular Superintendent retire or resign and not one of them have been replaced. This has meant that dave Catalano has had to be involved in them as well. In fact, for about the past 6+ years he has also overseen the care of Montauk Downs and so the budgets for these courses have impacted into Bethpage as well. In order then to balance out the work done on all the other courses the Black's manpower was both cut and shifted.
The biggest problem for Bethpage is that regardless of its condition they will always do huge numbers of rounds on an annual basis. This means that the revenues they produce can produce a more profitable "bottom line" with the maintenance budgets slashed. This is very important throughout the state as these "profits support the entire rest of the New Yoprk State Park system. Without these monies a number of smaller state parks would have to be shut.
So as you can see it really is a much bigger dynamic with Bethpage than any other major municipal facility.
The drainage problem on 18 was caused, NOT by the heavy rains during the Open, but by the extreme rains throughout the entire month before it with the Open rains basically breaching the dam. It was only because of the incredible drainage system at Bethpage (deep natural sand base and man-made) that the Open was even able to be held. There was not another course on the Island that would have been able to do so that week.
Ironically, and fortunately, a budget decision made back in 1934 helped in 2009. The original plans called for a drainage pond to be built at the base of the hill fronting the 1st tee of the Red and going all the way around to the 1st tee of the Green. If that had been built there wouldn't have been the soggy Open at all as the entire plateau would have become a lake...