Schmitt is getting desperate with his lies

In his letter to Newsday, Peter Schmitt’s verbal acrobatics attacking Democrats is just one more example of his willingness to say anything to get reelected. Schmitt has now gone from claiming that Democrats raised taxes to Democrats just voting to raise taxes but the taxes never being enacted. The first attack has been proven a lie and now he tries a desperate new attack. Let’s be honest here Mr. Schmitt although that would put you at a great disadvantage. You sir are the cause of Nassau County’s fiscal mess. You sir are the reason why the county was nearly bankrupt. After approving the BPA scam that cost the county $70million in ONE YEAR, Mr. Schmitt dares wash his hands of responsibility by blaming his indicted fellow republicans. Mr. Schmitt stood by as the county fell deeper and deeper in debt
while getting paid $60,000 a year to appear in local newspapers handing out citations. Mr. Schmitt approved the Gulotta budgets and fiscal trickery that caused New York State to create NIFA which at any time can step in and take over the county finances. The list of Mr. Schmitt’s fiscal malfeasance is long and detailed. His history of decieving voters is just as long and detailed.
The Democratic Majority under Judy Jacobs and County Executive Suozzi have spent that past few year cleaning up the mess left by Schmitt and the Gulotta Republicans. Schmitt’s pathetic attempts to shift blame merely hi-lights his contempt for Nassau voters. Mr. Schmitt’s deceptive mailings and outright lies in articles, letters and at local meetings brings me to quote Joseph Welch “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”

Here's his letter:
Nassau Democrats voted to raise county property taxes 58 percent. That's an incontrovertible fact that Newsday ["Don't Believe GOP Distortions About Nassau Taxes," Viewpoints, Oct. 26] simply cannot credibly deny, notwithstanding the paper's unabashed bias.

The facts speak for themselves. As reported in the Oct. 28, 2000, edition of Newsday, the Democrat majority in the county legislature enacted a budget that increased county property taxes 15.4 percent. On Nov. 28, 2001, Newsday again reported that all 10 members of the Democrat legislative majority passed a budget increasing county property taxes 15 percent. Once again, on Oct. 29, 2002, Newsday reported that Democrats voted to increase county property taxes 19.4 percent.

Let's do some easy math. If you were paying $1,000 in taxes prior to the first Democrat vote to raise taxes 15.4 percent, you would have been paying $1,154 after their vote. Now, after the second Democrat vote to raise taxes (a 15-percent increase), you would have been paying $1,327.10. And after the third year of Democrat votes to increase taxes (the 19.4-percent tax increase), your taxes would have gone to $1,584.55.

If you start with a base of $1,000 and after successive increases you arrive at a new total of $1,584, you have undergone a 58-percent increase.

Yes, Newsday will contend that the full force of the Democrat votes to raise taxes were not felt by taxpayers because the Republican minority on the county legislature voted to sustain the very necessary vetoes that were issued against the Democrats' crippling tax-increase votes. But that doesn't change the fact that the Democrat majority on the county
legislature, in three successive years, voted to increase county property taxes a crippling 58 percent.


Higher taxes are the only real answer to the county's fiscal woes that Nassau Democrats have pursued during the years that they have been in the majority. Their first and last response has always been to raise taxes.

Newsday and columnist Lawrence C. Levy can try to twist and distort the truth all that they want. However, every homeowner in Nassau knows that their county property taxes have never been higher. And all anyone has to do is turn to the editions of Newsday that I've noted above to read in black and white that Nassau Democrats did vote to increase county property taxes 58 percent.

Peter Schmitt

a break-down of this letter soon