Monday, December 03, 2007

Blast from the Past: 8 years of Peter Schmitt Lying

This is from the October 3rd 1999 NYTimes Long Island section...
"On Tuesday, for example, Mr. Blakeman and Peter J. Schmitt, the deputy presiding officer, boasted that they had discovered the county was spending $1.1 million to print and mail 451,000 calendars celebrating the county's centennial to Nassau residents and vowed to cut the money from this year's budget. Mr. Schmitt said he had learned this by digging through receipts and invoices. And he said that the calendars did not even arrive in homes until March.

But Caroline Smith, a spokeswoman for Mr. Gulotta, disputed Mr. Schmitt's findings, saying the calendars had cost only $108,000. In addition, she said the county had no intention of producing the centennial calendars again this year, meaning they could not possibly be cut from the budget.

By late today, Mr. Schmitt conceded the calendars might have cost less than he had originally thought. He blamed administration employees for misleading him, but nonetheless promised to cut a full $1.1 million from Mr. Gulotta's proposed budget for printing and postage -- calendars or no calendars."

I started to hi-lite the important passages in red but when I was done I realized that I had pretty much turned the whole thing red.

The facts back then meant as little to Schmitt as they do now. After "
digging through receipts and invoices" Schmitt discovered it cost $1.1million to print calenders. But it didn't according to Gulotta's office.
Who does Schmitt blame for his lies?
Gullotta's people of course.

And the spokewoman for Gulotta really must have wanted to lay the sarcasm on but didn't when Schmitt "VOWED" to cut the money for the Centennial Calenders in the next budget.
Because, you know, Centennials happen every year.

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