The Truth According to Tom Suozzi

Tom Suozzi's website, like his tenure as County Executive, is chock full o'features. He's got a great looking flash introduction, complete with a picture of himself walking on the screen and selling his snake oil medicine. He's got plenty of talk about the lighthouse, a twitter feed and a blog. All of this is great, for a man who's running for governor.

Suozzi has a strange way about the truth. He's got four things highlighted. One is the lighthouse. Well, I haven't met anyone who outright opposes the Lighthouse. Everyone who has concerns and caveats and wants them addressed by the Town and the villages, the proper forums to deal with zoning concerns. Suozzi either doesn't get that or just doesn't care, since the actual governing part of being CE seems to be beneath him.

The second is Nassau's tremendous turnaround. That's almost as big a lie as the third, property tax relief. Suozzi's spent eight years hiking spending and raiding the kitchen cabinets of the people. Just look at your tax bill and how it has exploded since Suozzi took office. Turnaround? The county's infrastructure is falling apart. NIFA cites Suozzi's shaky statistics countless times. If this man worked in the private sector, he'd be under investigation by the SEC and Cuomo for his fuzzy stats. And he claims to be a CPA! Finally, we have Suozzi's claims to be environmentalist of year. How do you reconcile his imaginary initiatives with the fact that county parks, the places where most people in this county experience the environment, all have browned grass or are at the cusp of closure?

His cuts to the police have led to a heroin epidemic in Long Island. Yet, here he is holding a 'summit' that accomplishes no good at all while getting his name in the NY TIMES. What's needed today is a strong police effort aimed at weeding out heroin dealers, trying to look good and impress the good government types. There's a big picture of Suozzi cleaning up the trash. Rather than clean up the trash that the towns and sanitation districts do a fine job of collecting -- and I say that intending to compare their stellar service with subpar service offered by Suozzi's County -- maybe he should clean up the trash he's collected at 1 West, as revealed in open court yesterday.

By the way, who created this website? I sure hope it wasn't done on county time.

Tom Suozzi's New Suburbia

Well, its finally come out. Tom Suozzi's vaunted New Suburbia is nothing more than the Jersey Rules of Thumb under a New Boss in a new state. These allegations are shocking by themselves, and are inexcusable.

But the most shocking thing is how Suozzi has systemically brought to the county. While in government there are sure to be occassional lapses -- an occassional lapse can be excused as an accident. Not so here. There were repeated violations -- for at least two fundraisers. Suozzi apparently made it his business to dissapear during the day and encourages his underlings to lie. The CE doesn't have a cell phone? That's almost as believable as the Tammany official who collected hundreds of thousands in bribe dollars in a magic box and claimed that he 'saved it.'

And the media is complicit in this disaster. They've abdicated their responsibility to report on these things. They ignore all mention of Suozzi's fiscal hijinks, and bury his public corruption under the carpet. Newsday, as the local paper, has a responsibility it continues to shirk. The Times has ignored it, devoting its shrinking Metro space to covering private lawsuits over similar harrassment at Bloomberg LP.

Furthermore, where exactly is the Nassau DA and the EDNY US Attorney? Public corruption is rightly targeted as the most nefarious ill public officials could inflict on the people. And here we have systematized campaign activity being conducted on public time. So much so that people made jokes about it. In New Jersey, we'd have had some indictments already.

I've always looked on public service as the most noble calling. People like Ed Mangano, a guy who could do something else and make a lot more money with no public scrutiny, were always something that I admired.

Suozzi has a different definition. His goal is to get somewhere fast. He wants to be governor. He's willing to loot the county to get there. He spends most of his time campaigning for other offices or chasing headlines as the chairman of Paterson's Property Tax committee -- an ironic position for a man who is the greatest taxer in county history. He'd rather be playing political games with minor parties than govern.

Perhaps this is why our county is in such miserable financial shape. We're one of the highest taxed counties in New York and the nation. Yet, we're still broke. Suozzi rams through an increase of the sales tax, and the condition gets worse. So, he hits everyone in the pocket by taxing home heating oil. When does it end?

Well, what's the result of this lawsuit? The county is likely to have to pay a multimillion dollar judgment. In fact, if you run something called a verdict search on similar cases, I think you'd see that similar cases could go into seven or eight figures. So, don't be surprised if we have to pay out many millions to cover Tom Suozzi's political operation.

And our taxes go up yet again.

Suozzi's legacy

If you haven't done so already, I recommend that every single reader of this blog log onto Ed Mangano's homepage (edmangano.com) and download the NIFA report. This blog is going to going through the NIFA report line by line, item by item. As a citizen, you deserve to know what is in the report. As a voter, you need to know what your elected leadership has been doing; and how the county executive and the legislature have mismanaged the county . And as a taxpayer, you need to know how your hard earned tax dollars are being spent.

Eight years ago, Tom Suozzi took office and promised to fix Nassau's finances. Call it another broken promise. NIFA found that Suozzi's administration has relied with increasing frequency on one shot revenue gimmicks. When that proved insufficient, Suozzi simply dipped into reserve funds and played around with the due dates on debt service payments.

I don't need to tell you what happens when you do that kind stuff when you balance your checkbook. In fact, its one of the reasons that California is nearly bankrupt. Nassau County cannot afford, for its citizen's sake, to play such games.

As if that weren't bad enough, Suozzi has resorted to even more fiscal gimmickry. He's booked as revenue programs that the legislature, controlled by Democrats subservient to him, have not approved. Some of those same programs require approval by Albany. These days, Albany is controlled by City politicians who are very unfriendly to suburbs. Suozzi, who's got his eye on all of their jobs, is not someone that they are going to be inclined to help much.

NIFA has cited Suozzi for failing to generate new revenue. Instead, he's simply relied on ever high taxes on property and sales. Check your grocery bills. He's not exactly heading down a sustainable path. He's also failed to save any money, but has

Where is the County Comptroller when we need him? Or better yet, where is a competent and qualfied County Executive who is going to devote his entire schedule and all of his energy to saving Nassau?

This is only in the introduction. Check back tomorrow for more.

The Suozzi Way

Tom Suozzi is many things, but first and foremost he is an expert at lecturing other people. It's almost as if he has made a second career out of lecturing everyone else in government, business or the country on what they should do. Of course, Suozzi holds himself out as the most successful public servant in America.

Nassau County has many different forms of government. Each has a different purpose, a different focus. Contrary to what many say, there is very little overlap of purpose. Except where people create trouble where trouble doesn't exist. Then, government comes into conflict. And the only thing that happens is that we, the taxpayers and voters, lose.

For the last 5 years, Tom Suozzi has been scolding the Town of Hempstead over the Lighthouse Project in Uniondale. Suozzi wants to allow Charles Wang, the Islanders owner, to be handed a parcel of land for a dollar. On that land, Wang is going to build a 'new suburban development,' whatever that means, and in theory use the revenue from real estate development to keep the Islanders in Long Island and refurbish Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum.

Suozzi has never explained why he believes that a developer should be handed a multimillion dollar piece of prime Uniondale real estate for a dollar. How could he justify that windfall to a big supporter? Especially when he has driven the county to the brink of bankruptcy. Why the property should be sold for market value is another story for another time.

But I'd like to compare Suozzi's method of promoting development with Ed Mangano's. Ed, whose district includes Bethpage, has a proven track record of working with local governments, involving the local citizenry in the process of zoning approval, and creating jobs and smart development. In the 90s, Grumman's sprawling campus in Bethpage was closed down. Thousands of people lost their jobs. The County's suffered a blow that many people thought would cripple it.

Ed Mangano didn't flinch. He didn't hold press conferences attacking everyone in sight. He didn't blame anyone for the disaster. He looked at the situation as a leader and a legislator, and took action. Ed saw a 600 acre campus and had a vision of a new modern business park.

Ed worked with the Town of Oyster Bay to attract business and development. He worked with local leaders -- of both parties -- and with the community leaders to fix the problem. There was no discrimination; no easy access for the politically connected. And the results speak for themselves. The property was rezoned and redeveloped. The property was marketed as a business park. Businesses moved in -- including Cablevision, movie studios, homeland security firms, high tech R&D and aviation firms.

Ed saw a problem, worked out a solution and got the job done. He didn't chase PR; he chased results. And now, thanks to his work, we have thousands of people working on the old Grumman campus. Even the famous actress Angelina Jolie spent some time in Nassau County filming a movie over the summer.

Suozzi, on the other hand, immediately turned to demagoguery. Rather than sit down with the Town of Hempstead Board and the Zoning Board, he immediately took to the airwaves. He promised untold benefits -- without any justification -- and raised a good deal of a ruckus. The Zoning Board -- whose job it is to foster common sense development -- raised their hands and said wait a second. We need to get an environmental review; we need to get local community input. We need to make sure this is the right way to use this piece of property. We don't want to leave the citizens behind.

Suozzi ignored that. He just kept right on holding his press conferences. He has made no effort to work with the Town or the communities. Garden City and Uniondale had concerns over traffic. Suozzi simply tried to steamroll right over them. It didn't look good to go through the process and LISTEN.

Government and leadership are about listening and leading. Tom Suozzi can't listen. He can only talk and sell. Tom Suozzi hasn't led the county to a better tomorrow. He's driven us to the edge of the cliff for the benefit of a few political favorites.

Its time for a change. Tom Suozzi just doesn't care about normal, hardworking citizens who are just trying to get by. Ed Mangano on the other hand, cares about Nassau County. He's spent years working for it. And he has the results to prove it.

Remember that in November.