Legislator Dennis Dunne, Sr. (Republican - Levittown) today joined fellow Republican members of the Legislature's Rules Committee in voting against a personal services contract executed by County Executive Tom Suozzi to retain Public Financial Management, Inc. (PFM) as financial advisors to the County of Nassau.

On January 30, 2002, County Executive Suozzi announced that his budget team discovered a deficit for FY 2002 of over $20 million and that the previous administration's multi-year plan was $220 million deeper in deficit than reported. "PFM was hired by the Gulotta administration to correctly identify the County's deficit and produce a multi-year plan to address it," said Legislator Dunne. "Despite the multi-million dollar price tag for these tasks, to date, PFM has done neither."

The $250,000 contract with PFM was approved by the Rules Committee by a party line vote, with all five Democrats voting for the contract and the Committee's four Republicans voting against it. The contract, which, calls for PFM to provide expert advice to assist in debt management, investment management, capital planning and development of an acceptable comprehensive Multi-Year Financial Plan, will run from April through December of this year.

"I find it astounding that County Executive Suozzi's 'New Team Nassau' is hiring Gulotta's old fiscal advisors," concluded Legislator Dunne. "PFM, which had two years to produce, should be, at the very least, replaced by a new set of fiscal advisors."