Pennies on the sidewalk

Monroe County
legislators have sure taken a pounding over the school nurse fiasco, and they
probably deserve it. But those who accuse them of politicizing the problem miss
the fact that it was — at birth — a political issue.

            When then-County Executive Jack
Doyle announced late last year that he was slashing the nurses’ subsidy, he
blamed Democrats because the Dems refused to support a bonding proposal which,
he said, would have saved the county money. The nurses’ cut was one of a long
list of cuts aimed heavily at Doyle’s favorite target: the city. Democratic
legislators Todd Bullard, Mitch Rowe, and Stephanie Aldersley — clearly
blindsided by the news — were at that press conference. A flush-faced
Aldersley took questions from the media. Rowe was so angry he could barely
speak, and, in fact, seemed close to tears.

            And then it got bad.

            What we’ve seen since that morning
was one nasty game of chicken splashed-out in headlines and leading the 5
o’clock news. Republicans would float the nurses to the end of the school year
if Democrats supported the bond. Forget the bonding, Democrats said —
directing attention instead to the county’s $1.5 million contingency fund —
what’s that there under the mattress?

            No one blinked.

            You know it by heart, no doubt.
Layoff notices were mailed to 77 nurses and nurses’ aides. The city school
district went the judicial route, and lost. The latest is that City Schools
District Superintendent Manuel Rivera is stitching together a group of private
donors to try to save the program for this year. Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson
has a taskforce working to find a permanent solution.

            So the kids keep their nurses,
provided Rivera can find the money. The nurses — the ones that stuck around,
anyway — keep their jobs. And county lawmakers’ “Q” rating rests somewhere
south of Tierra del Fuego: looking bitterly partisan and — perhaps —
increasingly irrelevant.

Democrat and Chronicle columnist
Mark Hare had a good point
when he wrote that for all the moaning the county leadership does about
unfunded mandates, it sure was quick to make the nurses the city’s
responsibility. The GOP will tell you that all it did was put city schools on
equal footing with their suburban counterparts. They apparently forget that the
city helps fund the sheriff’s road patrol, essentially subsidizing towns that
could well afford their own police force.

            But let’s talk about that bonding
for a minute. Republicans said if Dems voted for the bonding to make
state-mandated pension payments, they’d use some of the savings to keep the
nurses. It’s not a choice between borrowing and not borrowing, Majority Leader
Bill Smith said. The bill has to be paid and the county can do it by borrowing
the money from the state comptroller or by issuing bonds at a lower rate.

            Simple arithmetic. He’s right. But
the pension bill didn’t drop out of the sky. During the high times of the
1990s, counties’ contributions to the state retirement system dropped
dramatically, but everybody should have known that the good times wouldn’t last
forever. So what were our leaders doing? Putting money away for that rainy day
when the bills came due? Or draining the county’s coffers to blindly freeze the
property tax levy?

            A side note: the bonding did come
within inches of passing the legislature the fourth time it was put to vote.
Three Democrats — with the nurses in mind — voted with Republicans, leaving
the referral one vote shy of the majority it needed to pass. Word is that those
Democrats are living like lepers among their caucus now.

            Something else to chew on:
Republicans say the reason they can’t tap the contingency fund is that they
might need the money once the county settles accounts from 2003. So what was
with that Doyle press release last fall trumpeting that the county was ending
the year in the black? That couldn’t
have had anything to do with the fact that it was an election year, right? $1.5
million is a lot of money to you and me, but in the context of a $970 million
budget, it’s peanuts. Are we cutting it that close? Scrounging for pennies on the sidewalk?

Maggie Brooks is nice. Everyone
says so. The public likes her. The mayor seems charmed by her. Aldersley
doesn’t blame her for the theatrics that took place in the legislature during
the nurses’ crisis.

            But so what?

            The partisan divide is as great as
it’s ever been in the legislature right now. If Brooks tells Minority Leader
Aldersley an hour before the lej meeting that the bonding absolutely will not come up for vote — and it does
anyway — what does that mean? Aldersley doesn’t believe the county executive
lied. So what’s the other option? That she has little or no input into the
workings of the Republican caucus? So, who’s running things? Smith? Party
Chairman Steve Minarik? How does that make her anything more than County
Spokesman Maggie Brooks?

            That’s harsh. But it’s hard
remembering Brooks’ campaign pledge to end the partisan rancor in the county,
all the while watching the legislature tear itself apart. And doing so while
people’s jobs hang in the balance and the least of us wonders who will be there
when our children get sick.

            A run-down house is still a run-down
house, even with a beautiful row of azaleas planted out front.

            But at least Jack Doyle doesn’t live
here anymore.

An appeal in the
works?

The Rochester School
Board met Tuesday night to discuss whether or not to appeal the court’s ruling
on school nurses. Last week, Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Fisher ruled that
the county is not obligated to fund city school health services.

            “My staff is working with me to
refine our theories of appeal, and until I brief the board, I am reluctant to
address specifics,” says district counsel Michael Looby.

            Looby and schools Superintendent
Manuel Rivera have both said publicly that they recommend appealing the ruling.

            Countering the GOP argument that
eliminating the county’s nurse subsidy puts city schools on an equal footing
with schools in the suburbs, Lobby explains that unlike those other schools,
the Rochester City School District is fiscally dependent on the city and cannot
raise taxes on its own or bond.

            “The amount of local revenue
available is a function of the capacity and will of a different entity, and
unlike most of the other districts, the tax base upon which that capacity is
predicated has been dropping for a number of years,” Looby says.

            “At the same time,” Looby says, “the
concentration of poverty inside the city carries with it the unfortunate fact
that [city schools] will typically have a larger population of students with
serious health and social needs than is the case in a more affluent community.”

            Meanwhile, Rivera has created an
emergency fund to save the school nurse program. Financial commitments have
come thus far from Excellus Blue Cross Blue Shield, Unity Health System,
ViaHealth, the University of Rochester Medical Center/Strong Health, and the
Rochester Rotary Club.

            The fund is being managed by the
newly formed Rochester Education Foundation. Anyone interested in donating
should call 271-4100.

This article appears in Mar 24-30, 2004.