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Oct 30, 2009

Re-Elect Suozzi County Executive

Re-elect Suozzi county executive

It’s hard to argue with a track record like that of Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat from Glen Cove. Over the past eight years, he took a fiscally mismanaged, virtually insolvent county and turned it around, consistently balancing a budget that seemingly could not be balanced.

Suozzi saved money by cutting the county work force by 1,000 employees and instituting tried-and-true management practices that were previously nonexistent. At the same time, he has put in place a host of programs to improve residents’ quality of life, from smoking-cessation regimens to energy-efficiency incentives.

Suozzi also thinks big. He is looking to consolidate any number of local services, from water to trash-collection districts, in order to streamline operations and save taxpayers additional money. He even wants to consolidate certain “backroom” services among school districts, like law and accounting, in a county office. He has consistently taken his consolidation fight to Albany, where the state Legislature has largely rebuffed his efforts. Governor Paterson, however, appointed Suozzi chairman of the state’s Commission on Property Tax Relief, an important post that has allowed him to telegraph his consolidation message across the Empire State.

This past year, when it became apparent that the county was facing a $130 million deficit owing to a dramatic drop in sales-tax receipts in the recession, Suozzi acted quickly and decisively to avert disaster. He lobbied the state to enact three important revenue-enhancing measures, a.k.a. taxes and fees: a cigarette tax, a surcharge on speeding tickets and cameras to catch motorists who speed through red lights. He needed permission from the state Legislature to enact the measures, and the state granted him only the red-light cameras, which forced him to extend the county sales tax to home heating and electricity.

It was a politically incorrect tax to impose, and Republicans have hammered Suozzi on the issue. But the energy tax was necessary in order to balance the county’s books and keep it afloat without seriously reducing services -- most notably youth services, which faced the budget ax earlier in the year.

We believe that the imposition of the energy tax shows that Suozzi has the fortitude to make the hard decisions required of a county executive. At the same time, he has championed the Lighthouse project, a sweeping proposal to transform the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum and the surrounding acreage in Uniondale from a parking lot to a residential and commercial zone over 10 years. His support for the project shows that he has vision well beyond the here and now.

We like Suozzi’s challenger, Republican Edward Mangano of Bethpage, a 14-year county legislator and attorney. He has a proven record of service to Nassau County. He is, by all accounts, a friendly, intelligent, articulate man. Like so many in the GOP, Mangano is calling for the energy tax to be repealed, but he offers no real plan to make up for the inevitable shortfall in the county budget that would follow if he were to succeed in rescinding it. What he does not want to say, of course, is that services would need to be reduced -- big time.

Mangano has made much of the county’s troubled property-tax assessment system, saying it needs fixing in order to truly balance the county budget. We believe Suozzi sees the need to repair the system and has put in place a number of measures to do so, including hiring an appointed, professional assessor rather than an elected one. (The previous assessor was a politically connected former assistant district attorney.)

We liked Mangano’s idea to issue county bonds to provide low-interest loans to homeowners so they can purchase alternative-energy systems, including solar, wind and geothermal. We believe the plan would help lower homeowners’ energy costs while helping the environment by reducing the need for fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. At the same time, it would help stimulate the economy by putting local people to work in “green-energy” jobs.

The proposal, however, was not enough for us to seriously consider endorsing Mangano. Cast your vote for Tom Suozzi on Election Day.