Tom Suozzi's Credit Card

As county executive, Tom Suozzi has been spending a good deal of time maxing out the county credit card. He's not doing it literally, but playing a dangerous game of bonding, deferral and reserve depletion.

As a municipality, Nassau relies on the bond market. Its normal. But Suozzi's reliance has gone from a normal use of the bond market to get some cash before the flood of tax dollars comes in to using the bond market to pay for running the county.

Suozzi has been going out and borrowing money like you can't believe. Some of these bonds were supposed to be floated to retire older bonds. Suozzi didn't do that (NIFA, page 4). Instead he pocketed the revenue, kept the older bonds out there. What's the result? We're paying a high rate of interest on older bonds, a lower rate of interest on newer bonds when we should have only been paying one set of interest on the newer bonds!

Suozzi has protected a failed assessment system. This system coincidentally raises a good deal of money for Tom Suozzi's reelection campaign. The firms that handle tax cert, espeically commercial, make a good deal of money off their contingency fees. Those firms, including Jaspan Schlesinger and Mayer Suozzi, employ powerful Democrats including Basil Paterson (the governor's dad), Suozzi's Dad, and the chairman of the Democratic Law Committee. They're also big time contributors to Suozzi's Ambition Fund. Maybe its coincidental. But after eight years of broken promises and canned campaign slogans, don't you think its a little too coincidental?

How does this relate to bonding? If you're taxes are overassessed and you grieve it and win, you have the right to a refund of the excess. NIFA suggests (p. 7) that the county pay that refund out of general revenue. That makes sense. If you got a check from a client or customer and it was accidentally too high, you'd draw the difference out of your checking account. You wouldn't bond it -- or put it on a credit card. Suozzi, the man who claims that being a CPA qualifies him to be a public servant, must not have been a good CPA. His track record over in Glen Cove, which he left as one of the most indebted municipalities in the entire country, leaves much to be desired.

Suozzi's made a big deal out of the layoffs of county workers that will save some money. Sure, we'll save some tomorrow. But 2 days from now, we're going to go broke. Part of the buyout contract was that the workers got some money up front. The idea is if you amortize it over time usuing an actuarial table, the county winds up saving some money.

Guess not! Suozzi's put us on the hook for the money over time. So we're going to be paying a lot of interest over a long period of time. Thanks, Tom! You're plan to save us money is going to end up costing us even more over the long term.

And since, as NIFA points out, Suozzi has looted the county's reserve funds and relied on one shot revenue raisers to generate some spare income, we're back at square one. No money in reserve for a real rainy day (right now). No money to raise by hocking county property. Declining property tax revenues. A broker property tax system. A sales tax that is raising less and less money every year.