It’s hard to argue with a track record like that of Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, a Democrat from Glen Cove. Over the past eight years, he took a fiscally mismanaged, virtually insolvent county and turned it around, consistently balancing a budget that seemingly could not be balanced.

Suozzi saved money by cutting the county work force by 1,000 employees and instituting tried-and-true management practices that were previously nonexistent. At the same time, he has put in place a host of programs to improve residents’ quality of life, from smoking-cessation regimens to energy-efficiency incentives.

Suozzi also thinks big. He is looking to consolidate any number of local services, from water to trash-collection districts, in order to streamline operations and save taxpayers additional money. He even wants to consolidate certain “backroom” services among school districts, like law and accounting, in a county office. He has consistently taken his consolidation fight to Albany, where the state Legislature has largely rebuffed his efforts. Governor Paterson, however, appointed Suozzi chairman of the state’s Commission on Property Tax Relief, an important post that has allowed him to telegraph his consolidation message across the Empire State.

This past year, when it became apparent that the county was facing a $130 million deficit owing to a dramatic drop in sales-tax receipts in the recession, Suozzi acted quickly and decisively to avert disaster. He lobbied the state to enact three important revenue-enhancing measures, a.k.a. taxes and fees: a cigarette tax, a surcharge on speeding tickets and cameras to catch motorists who speed through red lights. He needed permission from the state Legislature to enact the measures, and the state granted him only the red-light cameras, which forced him to extend the county sales tax to home heating and electricity.

It was a politically incorrect tax to impose, and Republicans have hammered Suozzi on the issue. But the energy tax was necessary in order to balance the county’s books and keep it afloat without seriously reducing services -- most notably youth services, which faced the budget ax earlier in the year.