Dear Editor,

Normally, I expect at least some candidates for public office to stretch the truth when campaigning, but the recent blatantly false and misleading claims made by Santa Clara County Supervisorial candidate Otto Lee reported in your paper and in a recently distributed campaign piece deserve a response. Mr. Lee's claim that when he entered office as a Sunnyvale City Council member, Sunnyvale had a $14-million budget deficit, is just plain false. In fact, when Mr. Lee entered office Sunnyvale had nearly a balanced budget, which had been accomplished by the hard work of the previous city council, not by Mr. Lee. But what is true is that in his first year in office, Mr. Lee actually voted to dramatically increase spending so much so that it required the city to institute two new business taxes during his second year in office (actually he supported five major tax and fee increases in his first four years in office). Additionally, to support the increased spending policies he implemented, Mr. Lee voted to reduce city reserves (savings), so much so that by the end of his first four years in office, the city's reserves had actually been depleted by almost $8 million, a reduction from 25 percent of the operating budget to 20 percent. Conveniently, Mr. Lee also voted never to have to repay the city for the reserves he spent. So in actuality, Mr. Lee's four years in office were the highest period of deficit spending in the city's recent history, hardly the responsible

financial record he portrays. Hopefully after reading this letter and refreshing his memory, Mr. Lee's future communications with the public will contain factual and accurate information about his record.

Tim Risch, former Sunnyvale council member and vice mayor, 1999-2003