Suozzi Makes Government Consolidation a Top Priority

Mineola, N.Y. - Nassau County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi today pledged to make government consolidation one of the top priorities for the remainder of his term in office as a way to ease the burden on county taxpayers.

This crucial initiative, to cut taxes and create efficiency, builds on the Suozzi administration’s turnaround of the County finances. When Suozzi took office in early 2002, the County was on the brink of bankruptcy, with bond ratings near junk status. But by trimming the workforce, cutting borrowing, winning historic labor concessions and streamlining government, the administration has balanced the budget each year since 2002, created multi-million dollar surpluses and was rewarded with the highest bond ratings in 15 years.

The administration has accomplished all this while holding the line on taxes four years in a row. In fact, the County’s portion of the average Nassau County property tax bill has decreased from 22.7% to 17.7%.

In his ongoing effort to create efficiency and cut spending, Suozzi during his sixth State of the County address called for a blueprint that would map out how to consolidate some 620 separate taxing authorities that operate within Nassau – with little or no oversight. The separate districts, with their own staff and duplication of responsibilities, cost county residents millions each year in unnecessary taxes, Suozzi said.

These so-called “special districts” oversee operations such as water, sanitation, electricity, sidewalks – even a small, local Memorial Day parade.

“There are so many convoluted, conflicting, confusing, confounding taxing districts that it’s hard to know exactly how many there actually are,” Suozzi said. “For years I’ve been talking about the need to stop the duplication of services. But really, the worst and most costly overlapping duplication of services is the insidious maze of hundreds of special taxing districts that pile on to the property tax burden of Nassau homeowners.”

“For example, we have 70 sewer and sewage related districts, 26 commission-run water districts, nine town water districts, seven village water districts, two city water districts, three water pollution control districts, a water supply district and 31 communities served by private water companies,” Suozzi said. “We have 74 garbage collection entities, 27 park operators and 54 other districts including a sidewalk improvement district and the famous Memorial Day parade district.”

Most districts have elected commissioners – though few residents know where and when the elections are held – and over the years these tiny governments have become patronage-padded political fiefdoms.

“These special districts are wasteful pockets of patronage that add up to high-tax inefficiency,” Suozzi said. “Some have already been exposed as corrupt, many seem mismanaged and most are fundamentally unaccountable to their local property tax payers.”

Special districts sprang up decades ago, when Nassau’s population was sparse and local budgets were small. Though Nassau County has become highly developed, the archaic hodge-podge system remains firmly in place.

Suozzi tonight called on the County Legislature to approve an allocation of $500,000 of the 2006 $45 million surplus to develop a blueprint for government consolidation. He will also announce a $250,000 matching grant from the Hagedorn Foundation.

“We are excited about this public-private partnership,” said Amy Hagedorn. “And we are happy to put up our philanthropic dollars toward government consolidation because all the other efforts we are involved with on Long Island depend on the efficiency of our government. When we address social ills, we all too often come up against obstacles caused by the balkanization of our governing bodies.”

New York State as a whole is burdened with 4,200 special districts, a problem that Governor Eliot Spitzer has pledged to combat. Toward this end, Spitzer has assigned his special counsel Lloyd Constantine to help the County make its own government consolidation process a State model.

“Any effort to reduce costs by consolidating governments must also preserve what we love about suburbia,” Suozzi said. “We want to preserve home rule and local zoning control. We want to maintain close-to-home government and protect the suburban character of our communities and neighborhoods.”

Consolidation is one important way to address the County’s growing tax burden. Another is expanding the tax base in a County that has essentially stopped growing. Toward this end, Suozzi tonight called upon Nassau’s mayors and town supervisors to work together to identify the top ten targeted areas for planned smart growth between now and 2020.

Suozzi suggested ten locations ripe for economic development, in addition to the Nassau Hub. They are: the Village of Hempstead, where a major economic development initiative has begun; the 105-acre former Grumman property in Bethpage; the downtowns in Hicksville, Mineola and Freeport; the commercial strip on Hempstead Turnpike around Belmont racetrack; the Glen Cove waterfront, and the newly created Empire Zones in New Cassel, Inwood and Roosevelt.

Suozzi also announced a plan to make Nassau the healthiest county in the nation by the year 2020. Healthy Nassau, part of his 2020 Vision, will build upon existing initiatives and add new ones in order to sustain a healthy environment (focusing on air, land and water), while encouraging healthy living (tending to bodies, minds and spirits).

Healthy Nassau initiatives include: working with other large municipalities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and explore mass transit options; continuing to preserve the County’s few remaining parcels of open space, seeking a state-authorized cigarette tax to discourage smoking.

Suozzi closed his speech by announcing a plan to bring the County’s social service resources to the schoolchildren of Roosevelt.

“The greatest injustice I see locally is the failure to property care for the school children of Roosevelt,” Suozzi said. “I can no longer tolerate the loss of another generation of young children because of our failure as a community to help these children.”

There are scores of county agencies, County-funded non-profits and other community organizations already providing services in the one-square mile of Roosevelt. “The problem is that few of these agencies currently coordinate with the school district,” Suozzi said.

To address this problem, Suozzi and his social service staff have been working for the past several months with Roosevelt school administrators and non-profit agencies to map out a coordinated way to bring all of their existing resources to the neighborhood’s children.

Suozzi Makes Government Consolidation a Top Priority

--Calls for Blueprint to Shrink the 'Insidious Maze' of Taxing Government Entities to Ease Property Tax Burden

--Also Outlines Plan for 'Healthy Nassau' in Sixth State of the County Address; Lays out vision for "2020"