2006 State of the County Address

County Executive Thomas R. Suozzi

            Madame Presiding Officer, Ladies and Gentlemen of the Nassau County Legislature; and our honored guests - the members of our Social Services community: you are responsible for the best of each day’s achievements by government and the private sector working together. We salute you. 

My friends and fellow residents of the great County of Nassau: 

We gather once again, as we have on four previous occasions, to consider the State of our County. 

Unlike some previous gatherings, we do not convene in crisis to contemplate our county government’s most imminent threat to our survival.  Instead we assemble to calmly and responsibly review our success and to articulate further efforts to enhance our hometown – Nassau County.

I am happy to report that our County is stronger than it has been in over a decade and we are prepared to face our future with strength and with confidence.

Yet, despite our success, we gather at a time when the crushing burden of high property taxes, especially school taxes, is clearly the number one issue, devastating the most vulnerable families, presenting the single greatest obstacle to a safe, secure and prosperous life in our community.

In a few moments, I will speak about how I as county executive and we as a county, are reaching out beyond our traditional roles to help fight for something we all desperately seek – school tax reduction.

But first, I want to be clear, we are doing all we can at the County level to control County taxes.

Despite the mandates pushed down upon our taxpayers by the elected officials in Albany, we are currently operating on our third consecutive no-tax-increase budget.

And, I commit to you tonight, that I will do everything in my power to insure that our next County budget will be our fourth consecutive no tax increase budget.

To deliver responsibly balanced, no tax increase budgets while fulfilling our role as public servants requires creative and innovative thinking, strong management and oversight, and a commitment to the common good that super cedes a desire to please otherwise powerful political interests.

I have fought for the common good, even when it meant fighting powerful adversaries like the leaders of both political parties, the State Legislature, and the PBA, and I will continue to do so.

Tonight we meet at 60 Charles Lindbergh Boulevard, the headquarters of Nassau County’s Health and Human Services.

For three years my entire team worked to develop a new and improved method of service delivery and to make the move to this state of the art building – I thank them all.

Symbolized in this newly renovated building and what goes on here is my philosophy of government.  We must serve the public in a way that manifests the goals of our collective social conscience, and we must do so in a way that is the most effective, efficient and affordable.

I entered public service to help people. To feed the poor and house the homeless, to solve problems and to try and make people’s lives better.

But good intentions are not enough.

It is now widely accepted that in our Society, that we have an obligation to those who when left to face the rigors of our competitive free enterprise system, simply cannot make it alone: the frail, the elderly, the children, the mentally ill, the addicted, families crippled by a catastrophic physical illness, the abused and neglected, the veteran returning home changed by the trauma of war.

The question now is: who is going to do it and how; at what cost, through what procedures and with what priorities?

Health and Human Services has not historically been assigned a place of priority in Mineola – but I was drawn to it – for two reasons

First, I was drawn to it because I wanted to help people who urgently needed help, and second, when I entered office in the midst of a fiscal crisis, it was readily apparent that nearly $800 million of our County budget, most of it mandated by our State officials, was spent in the eight departments that make up Health and Human Services.

We put this huge portion of the County budget in the spotlight of our over-all program of sweeping reform.

Our goal - to serve the real needs of those people most in need, but to do so in a more cost-effective way.

In this building we established a single point of entry into Nassau’s Health and Human Services – consolidated at this one location -improved services, lower cost.

We call it “No Wrong Door.”  It symbolizes the long journey we have all taken in a very short period of time, a journey which proves that good will and hard work can break the tired past of cynicism, and political expediency, and rekindle the idealism, and optimism that have brought about a new era of cooperative and compassionate service to our community.

This is no rhetorical dream of the future.  It is already happening. 

Thanks to our efforts, working together during this extraordinary four-year turnaround, I can report to you this evening that the State of our County is remarkably strong.

The pundits said that you and I could never do it. The challenge was too great, the obstacles too many, the time too short. 

When the pundits speak, I am reminded of the little Italian boy who watched Michelangelo for many weeks as he sculpted his magnificent David from a huge block of marble. And when Michelangelo had finished, the boy beheld the statue and asked in wonderment: “How did you know he was in there?”

Michelangelo knew he was in there, just as we knew what Nassau County could be and would be when we chipped away the excess and put into effect honest, energetic, efficient government.

Our entire government is not yet a work of art, there is still more to be done, but here we follow the same philosophy by which Michelangelo lived and worked. 

He put it this way: “The greatest danger facing us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that our aim is too low and we hit it.”

Centuries later, the choice before us is still whether to aim high, to shoot for the stars, or to play it safe, to join those mediocre under-achievers who, in the words of Theodore Roosevelt, “neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.”

It is no accident that Teddy Roosevelt, with his rare courage and clear vision, was the only Long Islander ever elected Governor of New York.  Or as my mother likes to say, the first Long Islander to be elected Governor of New York.

 T.R. knew that mediocrity – aiming low and hitting low – can only invite disaster. 

We witnessed that truth first-hand when we took over what the Maxwell School of Public Affairs at Syracuse University called the “worst run county in the nation.”   

We inherited a government broken and battered and beaten, on the brink of bankruptcy.  Our buildings were crumbling, our once beautiful parks were the victims of neglect and indifference, employees were disheartened, the coffers were empty, the cupboard was bare.

All this was the sad result of decades of machine politics, insider deals, and the Establishment game.

We had no interest in games. We immediately got to work. We fired do nothing employees and created an employee evaluation system to make it clear that performance was more important than political connections. We cut the workforce to the smallest in 30 years. We saved more than $100 million dollars through our smart-government initiatives. We fought for and achieved historic union concessions.

We restructured, reduced, retired and refinanced Nassau’s outrageous multi-billion dollar debt.

We consolidated operations, streamlined procedures, introduced new technologies.

We went up to the State Legislature on a “Fix Albany” campaign and we returned with landmark Medicaid Mandate Relief that will save taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. 

People warned me:  They don’t like you in Albany, Tom.  The Albany legislators, the Albany lawyers, the Albany lobbyists - they don’t like you.  You have no friends there.

But I continue to insist that working for the taxpayers is not a popularity contest. 

In the words of Harry Truman, “If you really want a friend in politics, get a dog.” 

The Status Quo Establishment prefers insiders who will go along, who won’t rock the boat.  And meanwhile, the people suffer.

Well, we rocked the boat. Now Nassau is recognized as one of the most “dramatic financial turnarounds in the nation.”

The Buffalo News has reported that “Nassau emerged from its budget crisis as a role model for how to fix a County.”

 Nassau has received 11 bond ratings increases, the most in the nation. 

Today, Standard & Poors, Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings all have put us in the “A” ranks.

Those ratings don’t just happen.  We have earned those ratings through balanced, structurally sound, no tax-increase budgets; through careful planning for the offset of future expenses; through healthy “rainy day” and tax stabilization funds; through ferreting out waste and mismanagement. 

Our policies of fiscal constraint and responsible budgeting, while holding the line on taxes and enhancing services, have resulted in great success and we will continue to fulfill our commitment to those policies.

But we have other commitments as well.

We will continue our commitment to the environment.  My advisory committee has submitted nominations to the legislature for the $50 million dollar, voter supported, bipartisan program to preserve our few remaining farmlands and our precious open spaces, to improve our existing parks and preserves and to enhance the protection of our waterways. In Nassau we have a bipartisan commitment to the environment.

We will continue our commitment to address racial disparities.  Our government continues to grow in diversity with new African American and Latino department heads being added to our team.  Our minority and women owned business outreach is gaining statewide recognition. In addition, I will over the next month lay out an aggressive new effort to add to our already substantial agenda to eliminate health care disparities.  We will enhance anti-smoking and healthy diet and exercise campaigns.  We will target the prevention, detection and management of diseases such as diabetes, asthma, hypertension, AIDS and heart disease which disproportionately result in death in minority communities.  These efforts will not only ultimately save taxpayer dollars, but more important will save lives as well.

We will continue our commitment to the Nassau University Medical Center.  Last week my former Deputy County Executive for Budget and Finance, joined the leadership of the hospital and has been specifically tasked to create a strategic plan to insure the hospitals long term fiscal health.  If Mr. Gianelli accomplishes his task, to my and the County legislature’s satisfaction, within the next 60 days we will use funds from our tobacco settlement to guarantee that the hospital will thrive far into the future.

We will continue our commitment to affordable housing.  I will submit to the legislature within the next month an affordable housing plan that will significantly improve upon our record of creating or enhancing over 1,000 new affordable housing units.  Working with local village mayors and town supervisors the county will provide over $10 million dollars from the sale of surplus property to identify, purchase and support affordable housing for seniors and the next generation of new families throughout the county.

We will continue our commitment to downtown revitalization.  Again in bipartisan cooperation with Town Supervisors and village mayors we are identifying target communities for downtown revitalization.  The county will provide up to $1 million dollars to partner with town, village and state officials to develop new visions for downtowns such as Elmont, Baldwin, Roosevelt, Inwood, Port Washington, Mineola, Hempstead, Freeport, Long Beach, Syosett, Hicksville and others.

We will continue our commitment to Fix Albany, to reduce the unfunded mandates that burden our residents with high taxes. 

We will continue our commitment to fight for our fair share from the State, where Long Islanders currently send $3 billion more than we get back in State aid. 

We will continue our commitment to prevent crime, help families and save money by working with the Courts, the new District Attorney, the Police, the Sheriff, the Probation Department and the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Departments to better leverage our resources to prevent, detect and manage mental health and drug and alcohol issues before crimes are committed and families are destroyed.  As part of this effort we will create a Mental Health Court that will supplement the existing Drug Court and will better coordinate efforts of treatment and punishment.

We will continue our commitment to public safety.  Nassau County today has the lowest crime rate it has had in more than 30 years and we will continue to support the men and women of our police department who do such an extraordinary job.

This year we have also set aside $l.5 million in our budget to now encourage community-based not-for-profit organizations to join our “No Wrong Door” program. 

Let me spend a moment with you on why I believe “No Wrong Door” is so important to our future.

For decades, going back to the greatest governors of social conscience, Al Smith and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and their policies begun in New York, that FDR brought to Washington as the New Deal, America has worked to create a society that provides room at the table for everyone.

Today, dozens of Federal, State and local programs offer assistance for those most in need.  But the complexity of the bureaucracy, the overlapping of programs, the lack of communication between providers, has been both wasteful to the taxpayers and a source of further problems for the clients.

This is not a new situation in government.  Nor is it new that elected officials should call for the provision of services in a more comprehensive, coordinated fashion so that we can help people solve problems, make their lives better, and at the same time save tax dollars.

What is new is that we have done it.  We have designed and put in place a program that we believe will serve as a national model.   We have not just talked about it, we have done it, we have created the “No Wrong Door” program right in this building, and it works. 

Let me give you one example out of hundreds.

A few months ago, Ms. K., a 40 year old single mother, came to us because she was homeless – the county was spending over $4,000 per month to provide emergency housing in a homeless shelter to Ms. K and her two young school aged children.  Ms. K battles with a mental disability, but she went to work everyday and her children performed well in school.

 The family was desperate to leave the shelter system and find safe, stable, and affordable housing, and the County was determined to help and hopefully reduce its costs of emergency housing as well.

Through No Wrong Door, we had the County’s Homeless Intervention Program, the Department of Social Services, Mental Health, & Youth Board join forces.

With the County’s help the family acquired permanent affordable housing that they pay for, the children are now flourishing in an existing County after school program, and Ms. K. receives transportation and other supportive services to enable her to continue to work and maintain her family. The family’s strengths were supported, stability restored and expensive emergency sheltering terminated. Clearly both the clients and taxpayers benefited.  Isn’t that the way it should be?

“No Wrong Door” means people working together, breaking down the walls between government agencies, reminding government that its goal is to help people.

No longer do people in need have to wander through those old, neglected buildings with leaking roofs and electrical snafus, trying to discover which of eight health and human services departments will consider their plight.  No longer are they lost in a spider’s web of bureaucracy.

Walk through the door into this building and you gain access to all the social service programs you may need and may be eligible for.

But sadly, as I picture the face of Ms. K, I also see the face of an 80-year-old neighbor, a widow, who came to the door during one of my re-election campaigns in Glen Cove. 

“Tommy,” she said, “I don’t know what to do.  I can’t afford the taxes on this house and I can’t afford to move.  What do I do?”  And there were tears in her eyes.        

What do I tell her and the thousands like her? 

I think of that woman all the time.  I want to help people, keep the crime rate low, pave the roads and provide the best services, but I have a responsibility to that woman who grew up here, made a life here and who struggled to simply pay her property taxes and survive.

The truth is that all of our hopes, not only for her future but for the future of Nassau County, will be dashed if the Establishment politicians in Albany – of both parties – continue to push State mandates down upon the shoulders of our property taxpayers without funding their fair share. 

We can only go so far in fixing Mineola by ourselves.  If we are to finish the job, we have to Fix Albany.

It’s easy to pass State legislation, push down the costs on local governments and on our schools, and then say “why are you local guys raising property taxes?”

Let me give you the clearest example – school taxes.  While I have no say as county executive over school taxes, I recognize that they make up nearly 60 percent of our total property tax bills. 

At the request of school board officials throughout the County I have hosted a series of meeting over the past 4 months to get to the root of the problem.  Because the problem of rising school taxes, failing school budgets, community battles between school board members and community activists is not just happening in my community or yours – it is happening throughout our county, our island and our state.

Here in New York State 37% of total school spending comes in the form of State aid.  That sounds good until you find out that nationally 57% of school funding comes from the States.

But here is the real problem.  School funding from the State may be 37%, but here in Nassau we only get 17% of our school funding from the State.  That’s right, 57% nationally, 37% statewide and only 17% of our school funding here in Nassau comes from the State.  The remainder all comes from property tax payers.

So last week I hosted school board officials throughout our County to sign a letter to begin a campaign to urge New York’s elected officials to give Nassau schools our fair share of education aid.

We were joined by senior citizens, members of the Long Island Association, business and civic groups to protest this inequity.  

This is the first time that Nassau’s school boards have come together to speak with one voice about the problems they share. 

So why do we get such little State Aid here in Nassau?  Why do we get so little, while other communities with even higher costs and higher incomes get more than we do?

Currently, the State uses property values to determine the amount local districts receive.  And when we are measured by property values, the State believes we can afford to pick up the bill for our schools through property taxes. But with high property values in Nassau County, property wealth no longer reflects a homeowner’s ability to pay property taxes.    Many of our residents, especially seniors who moved here shortly after Levittown was first built are now house rich and income poor.

Nothing less than the complete transformation of Albany’s archaic Status Quo policies will provide the relief we need and we will fight for that change.  Will you join us?

 Locally, there is something further we must do to stabilize and reduce property taxes, and that is to implement our vision of the Nassau Centre and New Suburbia.

One of the reasons for high taxes in Nassau is that we have stopped growing.  America’s first suburb has reached middle-age.  We now have little open space left to grow and we want to preserve what we have left.  Meanwhile, traffic worsens and under current zoning laws we can’t redevelop those places that could sustain more density.

With no new construction or new business, with rising expenses and a flat tax base, local government will be forced to raise property taxes even further or dramatically cut existing services.

To continue on that course would be a catastrophe for Nassau.  It would mean not simply no new business, but a loss of existing business and a shrinking tax base to pay higher and higher taxes.  It would mean the destruction of the suburban dream.

We have a new vision for growth, a vision that preserves our existing single family neighborhoods and open spaces, that is not afraid to tackle our growing traffic concerns, and that targets new growth in emerging minority communities, in traditional downtowns, on brownfields and in the Nassau Hub.

This is the vision I have laid out for the Nassau Centre at the Hub with

- new office buildings, high-skilled industries and high-paying jobs;

- new sports, entertainment and tourist venues and housing for the next generation of young workers;

- the enhancement of Museum Row, not far from where we meet this evening;

- the Emerald Ribbon, a greenbelt connecting existing parks and preserves and Eisenhower Park with new bike paths and pedestrian walkways;  

- the Golden Thread, a commercial connection from EAB Plaza all the way to Roosevelt Field;

- and, a new transit system that links all points in the region with the Coliseum.

As you know, I have worked on this plan a great deal.  Tonight I am delighted to report to you, that after an exhaustive, competitive and open process, that within the next week I will announce a team to redevelop the coliseum and begin the transformation of the Nassau Centre.  If this team passes muster with the legislature and gets the proper approvals from the Town of Hempstead its plan will serve as the economic engine for Nassau County for generations to come. If executed properly it will both expand our tax base and improve our quality of life.

For too long, we have been playing defense, hanging on to memories of the good old days, wishing and hoping that we don’t lose them.  But wishing and hoping won’t help us.  It is time for action.

If we stick with the Status Quo, taxes will continue to rise, traffic will continue to worsen and young people will continue to leave.

This vision will not be realized in 2006 or in 2007 or perhaps not even in 2011.  No matter what happens, I will not be County Executive when Nassau achieves the completion of the vision of New Suburbia.

But I commit to you that I will work harder, longer and better to firmly put in place the vision for new suburbia and put in place the elements that will guarantee that regardless of who holds this job in the future the redevelopment of the Nassau HUB will move forward.

By now I am sure that many of you know that I am running for Governor of the State of New York.

I want you to understand that my campaign is about the people I serve as Nassau County Executive.

I know that property tax relief is the most important issue you face.

I pledge to you tonight that I will continue to fight to make property tax relief one of the most important issues in my campaign, and as a result I have already forced the other candidates to make it a major issue as well.

It is no longer enough that we fight among ourselves locally.  Our school boards, our town and village and city officials and even our county executives cannot relieve this onerous burden.  There is a structural problem that exists across our Island and across our State.  Don’t get me wrong, our local governments must continue to re-engineer, to right size, to route out waste and fraud the way we have here at the County.

But all the effort we can muster will not address the fact that local taxes here in our State are 72% above the national average.  That’s right, 72% above the national average. Not just here in Nassau or Suffolk, but throughout New York we have the highest local taxes in America.

It is time to fight back.  It cannot be that every local elected official - upstate and downstate, Democrat and Republican, Urban, Suburban and rural.  It cannot be that we are all high taxing, irresponsible, reckless spenders who have no concern for seniors on a fixed income and we do not want small businesses to grow in our communities.  It must be that we all share something in common.  We do. New York State government.

I will continue to fight to expose and correct the problem of unfunded State mandates like Medicaid and the Taylor Law that result in the gross PBA payouts we read about in today’s paper.  I will continue to fight for adequate, equitable school funding.  I will make sure that regardless of what happens with my race – Nassau and Long Island will win.

If I am successful, Long Island will have a Governor of this State that knows how real the property tax problem is and as Governor I will make the changes, necessary to solve the problem.

If, on the other hand I am unsuccessful, then I will have still placed this issue at the top of the list, so that the next Governor and State Legislature will be forced to deal with it.

No matter what, our issues will be heard.  Long Island will be heard.

And so we have come here tonight, joining together to forge the future of Nassau County as a community renewed for our children and grandchildren.

My friends, as we enter this last week of winter, we look ahead together to the bright sunshine of the flowering spring.

This week I saw the yellow and purple of crocus flowers beginning to bloom.

And across the sea, on the Normandy peninsula and in a thousand cemeteries around the world, new flowers break through near graves adorned with crosses and Stars of David.

These are the final resting places of Americans who gave their lives, who saved the world from tyranny, who kept our democracy alive.

While the topics we consider this evening are hardly as significant as the issues which have, throughout our history, inspired this nation to send its’ young off to war, it is their sacrifice, made on our behalf, which enables us to deliberate the issues before us.  They have won for us, our right to govern ourselves. 

When we talk politics and governance, when we address the problems that beset us in a free community, when we debate and vote and march and pray, we must earn the sacrifice of those who have made it possible for us to live in freedom.

That is a mission that demands the best we have to give. I must earn the risks my father took as a decorated hero in World War II. Today, whether you agree or disagree with the policies that took us into Iraq, we must earn through our active citizenship, the sacrifices made every day in the Middle East by husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters who believe deeply in our democracy.

In this gathering tonight are parents and siblings of some of those valiant men and women, who will not rest easy until their loved ones comehome.

Let us pray that they do come home. Let us work to assist those who will need our help. And let us remember, at all times, that for our right to be active in governance, young men and women have given their lives.In their honor, let our work advance the cause.  Let our work make the lives of the people better.  Let our work be worthy of their sacrifice. Thank you.