Less than three years ago, when I wrote my first of several letters to this publication about the severe fiscal crisis that faced Nassau County, there seemed to be no light at the end of a dark tunnel. Nassau's government was besotted with huge budget shortfalls, unaccounted for expenditures, personnel, material and policy mismanagement galore, and a host of severe managerial inefficiencies brought about by the institutionalized ruling political regime that governed this county for decades.

As the crisis worsened, the age-old mechanism that democracies employ to right wrong-headed ships of state occurred, and that of course was an election. In 2001, Tom Suozzi was overwhelmingly elected county executive, along with a returned legislature of his own party and a new comptroller better experienced in fiscal management.

The task of salvation of our broken county government that lay before the new county executive was daunting. With the strong character traits and exemplary abilities so present in this young man, Tom Suozzi faced the dark tunnel, and a little more than one year later, this sickest of sick American counties is well on the road to fiscal recovery. "We are not out of the woods," Mr. Suozzi told us in his Feb. 25 State of the County Address, "but we can see daylight through the trees."

A little more than one year later, Nassau's once politically swollen government is smaller than it has been at any time since Lyndon Johnson was in the White House. 2002 ended with a balanced budget. The county is borrowing less, cutting more, generating more non-tax revenues than in the past, and is set to issue, for the first time, merit bonuses for deserving county employees. While government is not a business there are numerous sound, proven business systems, strategies, and methods that can and do function well in government. More and more, in less than one year, our county resembles a service business rather than a sleepy, bloated political clubhouse.

The "horror stories" are legion: hundreds of telephone lines leading nowhere, with huge six-figure price tags attached to them; misordered PCs left to rot; senseless off-site office renting and abysmal personnel management, hiring and promotion. We no longer need to rehash the Keystone Cops/Boss Tweed types of episodes of incompetence and arrogance; suffice to say, the climate that will no longer tolerate this is fortunately well in place. "We are working harder," Suozzi said, and "... working smarter ... better ... and are helping more people."

As President Kennedy said in his Inaugural, the progress of the administration cannot be measured in the first hundred days or even in the first thousand - but that progress had to begin. In Nassau, it has. We are a long way from fully into the daylight. Years of the abuses and destruction of government will take years to repair. The severely challenged regional and national economies are holding tax revenues down. New York's regressive Medicaid financing system insanely requires a high degree of county financial participation. Indeed, Medicaid mandates are expected to climb from 13 percent to 15 percent this year alone. New York State is in parlous fiscal shape, and this too will challenge Nassau to do more with less.

But, finally, at long last, even the nonpartisan nay-saying bond rating community has noticed Nassau's significant reforms led by this county executive and the Democrats in the legislature. Nassau's bond rating was notched upward by Moody's before the county executive's speech for the first time since March 1987. This would not have happened if Moody's and the "The Street" did not have confidence in the proven abilities and results of the Suozzi Administration, the majority of the legislature, and County Comptroller Weitzman.

County Executive Suozzi has empowered his economic development "Czar" Peter Sylver to think broad, outside of the proverbial box, without fear, favor or untrained conventionality. He has devised a 50-year widespread community economic development plan that embraces all aspects of our economy, from high tech job creation to foreign trade; from Brownfield management to downtown revitalization and a great deal more.

The coming years will tell the story. The choices will be hard. The county executive, the legislature, the police union, and the employees unions will have to put shoulders to the wheel, and collectively push in the same, positive direction. There will be "give backs." But there will also be gains, and the ultimate gain will be the wholesale revitalization of all aspects of Nassau County government. As a Nassau resident, I am proud of all that has happened in this past year ... and I am also glad that I no longer have to write negative critiques!

Jon Weinstein