Welcome to the internationally renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in Nassau County - home of the brilliant Nobel Laureate Dr. James D. Watson. It was fifty years ago this week that Dr. Watson, and his colleague Dr. Francis Crick, announced that they had discovered the structure of DNA, the double helix. This discovery has revolutionized science and the world we live in and later tonight we honor him with the first annual Nassau County Theodore Roosevelt award.

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory embodies the magnificence of our home County of Nassau - its intellectual resources, its scientific and technological prowess, its architectural history and its modern facilities, its waterfront and open space, its proud record of accomplishment, and its bright future as our highly skilled technological partner.

An institution that not only cherishes its history rich in achievement, but recognizes that hard work, innovation and sheer determination are essential elements of its great future success - is the ideal setting to discuss the State of our County.

The State of the County is much stronger today than it was this time last year.

We are managing better. We are fiscally sound, and we are confident that we will achieve our goal of making Nassau the best County in the Country.

We ended 2002 with a balanced budget.
We have, while improving services, reduced the Nassau County workforce to its smallest level in over 30 years. Our smart government initiatives have saved us millions of dollars.

We are borrowing less.
We are cutting more, and we are generating more non-tax revenues then ever before.

We are working harder. We are working smarter, and we are working better, and we are helping more people.

Our 2003 budget is balanced, and we have a solid economic plan for the County's long-term sustainable growth.
We are confident because we are getting the job done!

But, we still have a great deal more to do. Many challenges remain. Nassau government was in serious trouble even when the economy was still booming.

Now we face not only the problems brought on by decades of government neglect and mismanagement, but we must also face the economic hardships that our Nation, State and region confront today.

During this time of crisis, like the men and woman of Cold Spring Labs, we confront challenges which at times seem to present immutable problems, and yet we must think them through, and we must - despite every difficulty, every setback, every adversity - find a solution to benefit all the people.

Along with our celebration of Dr. Watson's achievements, in a few days we also commemorate the 70th anniversary of the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt assumed office in the darkest days of this nation's worst depression. In his inaugural address, he said: "the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself."

I never really understood the enormity of that famous line until recently.
How could we fear, fear itself?

Just two weeks ago when thinking about whether we should really buy duct tape for our own home, did the message become clear. Fear will make us do things that under normal circumstances, would make no sense, and fear prevents us from doing things we know we should.

Fear could prevent an elected official from speaking out because he was afraid of the political ramifications.

But if we are to improve, if we are to move forward, we cannot fear to take risks. We cannot fear to make positive change, no matter what the consequences.

This is not a new concept to most Americans, but it is new to some in Nassau County who still refuse to recognize that the old way of doing business is over!

I was elected to do a job. I believe the people charged me with the responsibility of changing things. My job is to root out waste, fraud, and abuse and to change the county government's culture of putting self-interest before the public's interest.

And I will continue to do my job.

First I will lay out what has been accomplished already, I will then discuss three major challenges that remain, and I will conclude with our long term vision for economic growth.

Let's look back to our first days just over one year ago. We inherited a budget out of balance, a government out of touch, taxpayers out of patience.

We hunkered down in offices with leaking roofs and crumbling walls, scandals were commonplace from the Traffic & Parking Violations Bureau to the BPA Health Insurance Contract still on trial today with admissions of graft and bribery.

Everywhere we looked it was worse than we ever thought. No accurate record of the number of employees, of county owned buildings and land, no record of the number of county owned vehicles. Unknown checking accounts, uncashed checks, uncollected rents and unpaid bills.

Machine politics pervaded every department. Politically connected firms and high priced consultants padded county costs. Personnel decisions were based on politics not policy.

It is hard to imagine, but we found 1400 phone lines hooked up to county buildings with no phones attached, that we were paying $300,000 a year for.

How about the use of 1970's vintage computers while 1200 brand new computers purchased in contemplation of a Y2K disaster, sat in the basement for three years, and had never even been taken out of their boxes. After a review of county vehicles we had to take 8 vehicles away from employees who had no valid drivers license.

These and dozens of stories like them, added up to a county so close to bankruptcy that the State was threatening to take it over, vendors refused to deliver goods, and credit agencies rated Nassau County bonds only one step above junk.

One of the wealthiest Counties in the United States of America was rated the worst run county in the nation and was the subject of ridicule.

Well, Ladies and Gentlemen, those days are over!

A four year financial plan, bold ideas, supported by bold action, and bold Management, garnered the support of the democratic Majority of the legislature, unanimous support from Governor Pataki's and the State Legislature's appointees to oversee our finances - the Nassau Interim Finance Authority endorsement by, Newsday, the New York Times, The Long Island Association and the Association for a Better Long Island. Most important the three Wall Street Credit rating agencies, that had never given a bond upgrade to Nassau in the history of the County, and that saw governments around the country struggling under the new challenges of a depressed economy, gave a "positive outlook" to Nassau County after decades of decline.

Everyone endorsed our efforts except for those that caused the problems in first place - the machine politicians and the beneficiaries of the "old way" of doing business.

A plan is one thing -action is another.

I am proud to announce that, tonight our County workforce is smaller than it was when Lyndon Johnson sat in the White House. Over 1,000 people smaller today than when we first took office. While NYC, facing a budget crisis of it own, plans to cut 3% of its workforce, we will by September of 2003 have reduced our workforce by 15%, saving over $110 million per year. We have fired county employees indicted for bribery, for stealing from the county, for time abuse, and for drug and alcohol abuse on the job. We have offered an early retirement package that was taken by over 500 employees and changes in the culture, which now reward performance and discipline abuse, have inspired slackers to leave and great employees to excel.

And we have many great employees.

By depoliticizing personnel decisions and creating the County's first ever Employee evaluation System - which will be handing out the County's first bonus checks in March - we are making it clear - it's what you do, not who you know.

County employees are implementing Smart Government Initiatives that have reduced costs and increased service.

With 130 less employees and a reduction of over $1 million in overtime in 2002 our DPW team continues to perform magnificently. Let's give our Public Works team a round of applause for their great work during the President's Day blizzard and all year long.

The Health and Human Services group saved over $10 million dollars and provided better Mental Health and Drug and Alcohol Services by partnering with community based organizations, increasing accountability, and consolidating operations. Now, instead of doling out dollars, we are saving dollars and still responding to the real needs of people and to those people most in need.

The County Attorneys office saved millions of dollars by reducing the number of outside contracts from 300 to 48. Now new bright professionals, hired for their skills, and not their political connections, handle the county's legal work in house at a tremendous savings.

The Treasurer's office saved $2.5 million dollars in interest payments by paying judgments faster, and made millions by investing our funds more wisely.

We saved $1 million dollars a year by taking county offices out of rented facilities and moving them into county owned facilities.

We enforced existing laws and brought in millions by going after deadbeat parents who did not pay child support, by boot & towing scofflaws who refused to pay parking ticket and we took the cars that had been seized from those convicted of DWI, but had been just sitting in storage lots costing the county a $1,000 a day and finally auctioned them off bringing in over $1.1 million dollars.

We are going after grants in a systematic fashion and have already secured over $10 million dollars in transportation funds and are implementing a detailed comprehensive technology agenda to improve services and save money.

And over the next few weeks during the month of March we will be laying out two specific initiatives:

1 - A plan to generate $10 million dollars a year from our parks properties while providing better services to our residents, and
2 - a building consolidation plan that will drastically reduce the counties real estate holding, upgrade the efficiency of our workspace and enhance county operations while reducing energy, maintenance, and security costs by millions of dollars.

While Nassau already enjoys one of the lowest crime rates in the nation our Police Department utilizing computer mapping technology and management tools - NASS STAT - has reduced the crime rate by an additional 2%.

And while it has nothing to do with saving money, it is one of the county's most important smart government initiatives - when we hire people from Deputy County Executive, to department head, to laborer we are going to make sure that we properly represent Latinos. African Americans, and "persons of color", because the government of Nassau County should look like the people of Nassau county.

We cut overtime by more than 20%, saving county taxpayers more than $7 million.

We slashed more than $20 million by freezing purchasing, supplies and equipment, and reducing contractual services.

We drastically cut capital borrowing in half and put into action a ten-year debt reduction and restructuring program.

We reduced cash flow borrowing requirements by 62%, from $468 million in the year 2000 to $178 million in the year 2002 - the lowest cash flow borrowing for the county in over a decade.

That reduction in cash flow borrowing alone will save the county $6.8 million in interest expenses.

We have changed the county's corrupt political culture. The days of land-grabs, indictments, insider deals, sweetheart contracts, and Deficits are behind us.

We are not out of the woods. But we can see daylight through the trees.

Last year during my State of the County I pledged that if we stuck with the four-year plan I outlined that night, we would not raise property taxes for the remainder of my term.

I will honor that pledge.

I also stated and I quote "If this plan is approved by this county legislature. I make you this promise. We will fix it right the first time. When I report to you on the State of the County next year, the budget will be in balance and our credit rating will be upgraded."

Well here we are.

As I have already reported, our budget is solidly balanced, but as of yesterday the County had not been upgraded - that is why I am so proud to announce, that based upon the courage of the members of this Legislature who supported our plan, based upon the incredible work of the management team we assembled, based upon long hours of honest hard work and based upon the intrinsic strength of Nassau County - that at 2:00 pm today Moody's Investor Services, for the first time in the history our County, upgraded the bond rating of Nassau County!

I quote directly from the Moody's report "The rating upgrade reflects revenue enhancements and significantly reduced expenditures, particularly through employment reduction and operating efficiencies." And they further highlight the county's "conservatively structured 2003 budget with strong management controls."

Not only does this mean lower interest costs to the county, but it is the seal of approval by an independent fiscal entity, with no partisan agenda, saying loudly and clearly Nassau is moving forward again.

Of course, there are bound to be politicians who say we are not doing enough. They love to criticize without taking responsibility or even offering a program.

To these complainers I say: tell me specifically what you would do differently? How would you do it? How much you will save? But they never have specifics.

There are three specific elements of our four-year plan that still must be accomplished for us to fully succeed. In fact Moody's highlighted these same items noting "the following three key expenditure items will need to be carefully monitored this year as they will directly affect the size of out-year deficiencies: state legislative approval for the proposed Sewer and Stormwater Authority . . . unsettled union contracts, and growing . . . Medicaid expenditures."

They further noted that "future success of the county's sophisticated fiscal management team . . . [on these issues] . . . will put upward rating pressure on the current rating and outlook."

Tonight, I ask again and I welcome the support of all who seek to keep down the costs of County Government.

First, we need swift action by Governor Pataki, the Assembly and the Senate on our proposed Sewer and Storm Water Authority, a financing tool strongly supported by the credit rating agencies and NIFA that will ease pressure on the County's general fund, save $25 million a year and not cost the taxpayers a single cent.

Twenty-five such authorities currently and successfully operate in our State's counties, municipalities and regions, as well as in major communities across the nation.

The Authority will not only save us money, it will ensure the preservation of environmental quality under new requirements of the Federal Clean Water Act.

Second, tonight I call upon Governor Pataki, the Assembly and the Senate to adopt a Medicaid cap on the amount of costs from this Federal program that only New York State and the State of New Hampshire require local property taxpayer's to foot 25% of the costs.

Our 2003 budget in Nassau is solid but in the coming years rising Medicaid Costs and other State mandates - expected to climb between 13 and 15% a year - will generate a structural imbalance between recurring revenues and expenses.

Medicaid is not a local program. It is mandated by the State and Federal Government, yet it cost local property tax payers $280 million a year.

If the State Government paid these costs, as do most states in the United States, we would reduce our county property taxes by 40%.

Third, we must settle our union contracts. The CSEA union is now negotiating with us in good faith and I believe that we will reach an agreement that accomplishes our mutual goals.

Tonight I call upon the leadership of the police union to abandon their hostile posture and to do their fair share.

Our police are well paid and they deserve to be, but if we are to succeed in returning the County to fiscal health we need them to cooperate.

We are not looking to reduce our police pay, but we do propose in all fairness, that there be no retroactive raises for 2001, 2002 and 2003. If we grant 3% raises for the next three years we can achieve our savings targets for Nassau County and the police will still be a well-paid elite force.

I urge you, members of the public, to continue to hold our police in high esteem and respect them for the important and dangerous work they do.

But I ask you to stand by me as I urge the union leadership to stop their unreasonable demands.

I have offered to sit down and am still willing to sit down with the police union leaders. The county is now engaged in binding arbitration and if we lose this battle it will affect not only us, but our children.

And it is to the future that our children will inherit that I devote the final minutes of my report to you on the State of our County.

These are the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the World War II veterans - the greatest generation and their families- who were the pioneers of Nassau County with dreams of a better life, who started families, bought their first home, set up their first swing-set, planted their first trees.

Now the county they built, the county that grew from 400,000 people in 1950 to 1.2 million people in 1960, has reached maturity. It has stopped growing. Our population is about what it was in 1960 and our assessed valuation is about what it was in 1990.

It was a rapidly expanding property tax base and record growth in both new homes in the 50's, 60's and 70's and commercial growth in the60's, 70's and 80's that filled our County government coffers with funds.

Now, there are simply few places left to grow without special effort. There are few open spaces left, and we want to keep those few that are. The commercial strips are already heavily developed and traffic is starting to choke us.

But we need to grow.

After we finish rightsizing our government and eliminating waste, where else will we look. If our costs continue to rise because of health insurance expenses, state mandated Medicaid costs and labor costs, but our property tax base no longer grows, where will the money come from?

It is with this predicament in mind that we have formulated an economic development plan for the next 50 years of Nassau's history that seeks to accomplish three goals: 1 - we must continue to expand our tax base so that we can bring in new revenues to pay for the services we receive
2 - we must encourage development that brings in high wage jobs so that families will earn enough money so that they can afford to live here, and
3 - any development that we encourage must be that which actually enhances our suburban quality of life and does not distract from it, taking into special account traffic and the environment.

To accomplish these three goals we have 6 economic development initiatives we are sharing neighborhood by neighborhood throughout the county.

Our first Countywide-goal is to attract additional high-skilled, high-tech industry.

Second is to revitalize our traditional downtowns.

Third is to recycle and reuse brownfields, or formerly industrial sites that are either polluted or perceived to be so.

Fourth is to build affordable housing for young people and senior citizens.

Fifth is to preserve open space, and

Sixth is to encourage sports, entertainment and tourism.

High Skilled, high tech industries such as Biotechnology, Computer Software, healthcare, banking and finance and entertainment, will provide high wages for employees, have tremendous growth potential and are suited to the highly educated workforce that lives here.

Downtowns are essential to building communities and provide for convenient shopping that does not require long drives to increase traffic.

Brownfield redevelopment cleans up pollution that blights the landscape and threatens the health of many of our neighborhoods, brings back jobs and wages to older communities that once benefited from the former uses, and also takes pressure off of the development of precious little remaining open space.

In both the case of Brownfields and downtowns, the marketplace of development will not solve these problems on its own. A developer would rather go to a virgin piece of land with no concerns of the EPA, or the DEC, no need to assemble multiple parcels and no need to demolish or retrofit what is already there. That's why Suffolk's farms are now so sought after, the same as ours were in the 50's, 60's and 70's.

While mentioning Suffolk, let me ask you to join me in congratulating Bob Gaffney on his 12 successful years a Suffolk County Executive. Bob, thank you for the help, advice and friendship you have shown during my first year in office.

We all wish you great success.

If we want to recycle brownfields and downtowns because that's good public policy, we are going to have to help the developers along - making sure they responsibly develop in ways that accomplish both our goals and theirs.

We must make housing available for those seniors who built Nassau when they moved here 50 years ago, but no longer want to mow the lawn or pay the taxes.

We need places for working families making 50 or 60 thousand dollars a year to live so they can help the County in its future growth.

We must preserve the open space we have left - because that's one of the things that makes suburbia a more special place than our neighbors to the west. We have only three farms left in Nassau - think of tall green cornstalks in the sunshine of late August, and picture horses running around a paddock on a warm spring day. We still have 38 horse breeders in Nassau County. We need to encourage more equestrian activities because they make economic sense for the county that is home to the Belmont Stakes and because, like farms, when we drive by, we stop to show our children or grandchildren. It is an important connection to our heritage and to the gift of God's divine Creation and we must preserve it.

Lastly we need to encourage tourism, because tourism is an industry that generates sales tax revenue and it's an industry that works to sustain our quality of life. Tourists will not come to Nassau if we are choked with traffic, tourist will not come if our waterways are polluted, Tourists will not come if we lose our charm - for the tourism industry to survive, it must work to preserve the quality of life in the nation's first suburb that makes it worth visiting.

Tonight, I have tried to lay out for you where we have been, what we have done, the challenges we face and our vision for the future.

There are many more issues we confront, including illegal housing, code violations, gangs, environmental threats, pockets of poverty and de facto segregation. After decades of neglect these issues are now receiving the proper attention they deserve. As we solve our County's fiscal crisis we can focus even greater resources to solve these long-term problems but we will only succeed by working together.

I am confident we will achieve our goals because I know what a special place this is.

We have the highest rising property values in the nation, we have low crime and low unemployment, we have beautiful North Shore Waterfronts and South Shore ocean beaches - we have beautiful parks and open spaces, the best healthcare in the nation and wonderful schools. We are a stones throw from the capital of the world NYC.

We can be the best County in the Country because despite our age we still have youthful optimism.

That youthful optimism is best manifest in the young scientists we have here tonight.

Gifted scientists at Cold Spring Harbor are working to cure cancer, to study our chromosome structure and functions of our genes to unlock the mysteries of memory and learning, to apply new knowledge gained from imaging of the brain, and much more.

In addition, here in Nassau we are proud to boast of one of the largest numbers of Intel Science Competition semi-finalists of any community in the nation. Tonight we are joined by a dozen Nassau County Intel Competition winners. Please stand so we may congratulate you. We are so proud of each and every one of you.

You inspire us to press on, to be free from fear, to be youthful. Because youth is a quality of spirit, not a quantity of years. Youth, a quality of courage not timidity, a quality of idealism not cynicism - it is a quality of hope that overcomes the darkest fears.

Is Nassau County Government better than it was a year ago? The answer is: yes, far better.

Is our government exactly where we want it to be? Absolutely not.

But we arm ourselves with youthful optimism and courage as we seek to change from the old to the new, we press on because we know:

At every crossroad on the road that leads to the future, each progressive spirit is opposed by a thousand men appointed to guard the past, and we know, that we, as the generations that came before, shall have nothing to fear, but fear itself. Because if we have the courage to not be afraid, together, we can accomplish all that we set out to.

Thank you, thank God for our wonderful gifts and may God Bless America.