Mangano Hosts Community Outreach Event

On October 7, 2009, Citizens for Mangano held a Community Outreach party, inviting the concerned citizens of Nassau County to Ed Mangano’s headquarters to meet the legislator and learn more about his campaign for Nassau County Executive. With the room packed with supporters, Legislator Mangano spoke about his plans to fix Nassau, such as eliminating the Home Energy Tax, creating local job opportunities for Nassau County residents, and reducing the $150 million dollar budget deficit churned out by the Suozzi administration. This was soon followed by questions from the audience. The evening then closed with informal discussions over pizza and soda as Legislator Mangano mingled and personally greeted each one of his supporters.

While highlighting the key points of his campaign, Ed Mangano demonstrated just how much his vision for Nassau County diverges from his opponent’s detrimental eight years in office: “If you want to have a county for you, for your children, that’s stable, that can deliver services properly, we have to fix the system now. So that’s my message – our message is to cut wasteful spending, freeze and fix the broke and bleeding property tax assessment system, stop and repeal that Home Energy Tax…and most importantly create local jobs and local opportunities.”

Legislator Mangano talked extensively about fixing the broken property tax assessment system that continues to generate a $100 million loss despite the current administration’s unsuccessful attempts to fix it, including spending $50 million for new technology that failed to make any difference. Rather, Legislator Mangano discussed his own plans for the property tax assessment system, stating, “We have to freeze [the tax assessment system], set it, give people the benefit of their correction, and then work on fixing it when we’re not reassessing every year.” Unlike the current administration, Legislator Mangano does not plan to continuously “throw good money after bad.” Instead, he plans to make sure that taxes will not rise until the system has been reevaluated so that it stops draining $100 million in taxpayer money every year.

Legislator Mangano similarly argued against Suozzi’s Home Energy Tax, describing the tax as one that taxes “everything and anything you can use to cool or heat your home” including “electricity, oil, natural gas…propane, [and] even firewood.” He called the Home Energy Tax “regressive” and explained that this new 2.5% tax implemented by Suozzi ”hurts those who can least afford it.” Legislator Mangano plans to put an end to this tax if elected to County Executive.

Legislator Mangano also spoke about bringing more local opportunities to Nassau County residents rather than giving these opportunities to people in other counties, something which has occurred too frequently under the Suozzi administration. As Legislator Mangano noted during the event, “The emphasis is on local. This county, if you can believe it or not, sends money out of state [and] hires companies out of state. And I tell you, I sit on the committees that review this stuff, I vote against these contracts. The testimony there, by their own administrators, administrators that work for this county…is that, ‘Well, they’re cheaper.’ Well, obviously they’re a little cheaper because they don’t have to pay these taxes that are imposed on them by this government.”

Legislator Mangano again highlighted Suozzi’s lack of focus on local residents when he discussed the current administrations’ doubled patronage positions, noting that “20% of those people [in patronage positions] don’t even live in Nassau County. Okay, so that means they take these big salaries, many of them making over $100 thousand, and they take that money, they get in a county car that you paid for with your gas, and they drive over a bridge and they spend their money in another county. So what that means is now you lose the sales tax revenue that would have been generated from that dollar. And that sales tax revenue is a large part of our budget – a large part of our revenue.” In direct contrast to his opponent, Legislator Mangano vowed that if elected County Executive, he will keep both job opportunities and taxpayers’ money available primarily to local residents and businesses. Legislator Mangano’s plans for Nassau County include “…start[ing] an Office of Local Opportunity, and…get[ting] more competitiveness in this bidding process, and...teach[ing] Nassau County residents and Nassau County businesses how to get this business, compete for this business, and keep this money here, in Nassau County.”

With respect to Suozzi’s ever expanding patronage system, Legislator Mangano related it to the Nassau County’s $150 million deficit. He argued that “if [Suozzi] didn’t expand that office – if he didn’t expand his office – he would not be spending $21, $22 million a year more on patronage. Over eight years, and I’ll round it down to 20, that $160 million. We’re $150 million in deficit.”

He also pointed out that while Suozzi started with a $100 million deficit from the prior administration, he had been given by New York State $105 million, thus allowing him “a clean state to start off here in Nassau County.” However, Legislator Mangano also remarked during the event that despite having a “clean slate,” Suozzi has increased real property taxes by 43%, increased fees, added the Home Energy Tax, and cut down the county workforce from the “bottom,” eliminating workers such as people who “plow the roads, cut the grass, take care of your parks, especially units of the police.” Despite all this, Legislator Mangano noted that Nassau County is now in a $150 million deficit, created during Suozzi’s eight-year administration and $50 million more than the deficit left by the prior administration. Ed Mangano then reiterated his own ideas for decreasing the deficit, such as by cutting down patronage and fixing the tax assessment system, which, as noted above, loses $100 million a year.

At the end of his address, Legislator Mangano eagerly accepted questions from the audience before socializing with the crowd. Of primary importance to the audience was the Long Island Lighthouse Project. Once again, Legislator Mangano showed how much he differs from Suozzi and his failed administration. While Tom Suozzi has yet to develop the 77 acres in the Town of Hempstead that make up the Coliseum property, Legislator Mangano reviewed his own success in Bethpage, in which he worked with legislators of both parties and redeveloped 400 acres of the Grumman Property, creating a diversified property and creating 15,000 new jobs for Nassau County residents. Legislator Mangano stated that “we would be sitting in a new arena now if I lead Nassau County because [Suozzi] has polarized the issue and it shouldn’t have been done. You have to bring people together in order to achieve this type of development,” something which Legislator Mangano was already able to accomplish in Bethpage. Legislator Mangano concluded, “We want to see that development, we want to see job creation, we want to see a destination – it just has to be a destination that’s sustainable and adds value…. They boiled this down to a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ It’s not a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ – it’s what level of development are you going to have and who’s going to pay for it and [that] everybody gets their value…. It could be done – we did it in Bethpage and we’ll do it in Uniondale.”

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