Biography

Howard S. Weitzman

Now in his second term as Nassau County Comptroller, Howard Weitzman serves as the "fiscal watchdog" over the County’s $2.8 billion dollar budget. As the first CPA to ever be elected to the office of Nassau County Comptroller, Mr. Weitzman has reinvigorated the Comptroller’s Office and issued many ground-breaking audits. His work on special taxing districts has been the driving force behind proposed reforms at the state level.

In his first term Comptroller Weitzman worked with Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi to bring the county back from the brink of bankruptcy. Together, they achieved a historic financial turnaround, turning deficits into surpluses and providing balanced budgets without a tax increase for five years in a row. Mr. Weitzman assembled a highly professional senior staff, bringing much needed government skills and modern management techniques to the Comptroller's Office.

Under Mr. Weitzman, the Comptroller's Office focused audits on the areas of County government with the biggest expenditures, where potential savings would be the greatest. His audits of the Clerk’s Office, the Parks Department, the Nassau County Correctional Facility and the Police Department have identified millions of dollars in potential savings. He has also audited the Coliseum management company and other firms under contract with the County, leading to lucrative recoveries for Nassau County taxpayers.

Applying his many years of experience in the health care field to the problems of Nassau County residents, he conceived and launched the NassauRx Card -- an innovative prescription drug discount program that provides substantial savings off retail prescription prices at no cost to County taxpayers. The card, launched in July 2004, is accepted at more than 90 percent of the county's drugstores, and provides discounts of up to 40 percent on commonly prescribed drugs. NassauRx Card has already saved Nassau residents more than $8 million and is now available on line.

More recently, Mr. Weitzman launched an unprecedented series of audits of town garbage districts, becoming the first county comptroller in history to audit any of Nassau's 140 special town taxing districts. In the process, he uncovered millions in waste and abuse, and large discrepancies in the price of garbage, water and fire service in neighboring communities. In April 2007, Mr. Weitzman was selected to serve on the New York State Commission on Local Government Efficiency and Competitiveness, a panel charged with developing a plan to streamline local governments and end the cycle of continually skyrocketing property tax increases. Mr. Weitzman also serves as chairperson of the New York State Association of Counties Committee on Taxation and Finance

Among Mr. Weitzman’s other accomplishments are his newly-instituted procedures for social service agencies to prevent and detect fraud; his creation of the County's first volunteer citizens Audit Advisory Committee; his drive to eliminate wasteful duplicate health benefits for County employees; his work to stabilize the failing Nassau Health Care Corporation, whose mounting deficits had threatened the provision of medical services to the county's poorest communities; and his in-depth analyses of the County's budgets and multi-year plans.

Mr. Weitzman is the former Mayor of Great Neck Estates, where he and his wife Susan have lived for 30 years and raised three children. He is a former national healthcare partner of the accounting firm KPMG. Later he founded and served as chief executive of a healthcare financial services firm and a mail-service pharmaceutical company. He is a graduate of Brooklyn Technical High School and Queens College.