Suozzi, Faso said Spitzer tax cut plan flawed, phony — Newsday.com
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Democratic candidate for governor Tom Suozzi found a crowd Tuesday that knew him well and applauded the underdog candidate’s plan to unburden local taxpayers by fixing Albany.

“I’ve walked your walk,” Suozzi told the New York Conference of Mayors, “I know what it’s like when they come up to you and complain about taxes.”

But Suozzi said he knew then, and preaches now, that the biggest headache for local governments and their taxpayers have been expenses passed on by Albany. They include the rising local share of the Medicaid health program for the poor, said Suozzi, the Nassau County executive and former Glen Cove mayor.

Suozzi called Albany “a dysfunctional, broken, rotten-to-the-core system” that only he, a chief executive and government reformer, can fix.

Suozzi then directed his criticism at his primary opponent Eliot Spitzer, the front runner and state attorney general who built a national reputation with his investigations that reform Wall Street. Spitzer presented his property tax cut plan to the mayors’ group on Monday.

“If Eliot Spitzer’s plan was a Wall Street firm … Eliot Spitzer would have indicted it for fraud,” Suozzi said, drawing laughs. Suozzi has proposed a $5 billion property tax cut plan that includes reducing the state work force, cutting Medicaid fraud and waste, pension cost reforms, and other structural reforms.

Republican designee for governor John Faso called Spitzer’s plan the “ramblings of a candidate who does not have a solid grasp on state finances.”

FYI..