Comptroller Comments on County Executive's
Four-Year Financial Plan

Weitzman Calls Plan "Credible, Fiscally Sound & Achievable"
Urges Nassau County Legislature, NIFA to Approve It

Mineola - Calling the four-year financial plan proposed by County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi "credible, fiscally sound and achievable," Nassau County Comptroller Howard S. Weitzman will urge the Nassau County Legislature to approve it on Monday afternoon, April 15.

The county's chief fiscal watchdog will offer his analysis and commentary on the plan Monday during a meeting of the Legislature. The comptroller also is distributing copies of a report his office prepared after carefully reviewing the calculations and underlying assumptions of the plan to ensure its fiscal integrity.

"The county executive and his team recognize that restoring our ailing county to financial health, following years of fiscal mismanagement and inaction, is a daunting challenge," said Weitzman. "They have produced a serious, substantive plan that does not rely on one-shot or non-recurring revenues. Rather, this proposed roadmap to financial health recognizes the need for sustainable expense cuts, coupled with increased revenues and productivity."

Weitzman noted that the comptroller's office welcomed the opportunity during the plan's development to share ideas with the county executive and to provide recommendations to help resolve the county's current financial crisis.

"We are pleased that a number of initiatives contained within the plan are consistent with those we have advanced," he said. "We are particularly heartened by the county executive's recognition that the county's financial problems are, as he puts it in the plan, 'exacerbated by runaway long-term borrowing to pay day-to-day operational expenses instead of investing in long-lived assets like new buildings or infrastructure improvements.' To that we would add, as he does elsewhere in his plan, using 21st-century information technology."

Noting that Nassau County's structural deficit - it spends more money than it takes in every year - has ballooned, Weitzman said, "The county executive has created a working document that seriously addresses the county's structural deficit."

However, the comptroller's office believes some of the underlying assumptions, such as those pertaining to projected county labor concessions and necessary state legislation, may be more difficult to achieve than others. Weitzman maintains that failure to obtain needed state relief from the county's unique requirement to assume the full responsibility to refund claims for real estate taxes the county neither imposed or benefited from may jeopardize its fiscal recovery and prompt the need for other contingency actions set forth in the plan.

Much additional work will need to be done once the plan is adopted, according to Weitzman. "The county budgets necessary to implement it may be hard pills to swallow, but as difficult as curbing Nassau County's mounting deficits will be, we can be successful if the political will is there to take the tough actions that are needed," he said.

"Nassau County needs to take some strong and painful medicine to relieve its financial ills and prevent further hemorrhaging. The plan laid out by the county executive sets forth a prescription for returning the county to fiscal health. Now, we must act upon it, closely monitor our progress and be prepared to make any necessary modifications."

Click Here for the Introduction and Summary of the County Comptroller's Comments on the Four-Year Financial Plan.

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County Comptroller's Comments on the Four-Year Financial Plan ( ~ 153 kB - 28 pages .pdf file )