This year’s county-executive
campaign could have been about ideas, issues, and vision. It will not be. Steve
Minarik’s Republican machine has seen to that. To boost Maggie Brooks’ chances
against Rochester Mayor Bill Johnson, the Minarik machine has launched a
campaign of fear, divisiveness, and hate. And a passel of Republican elected
officials has fallen right in line.
                 It’s bad enough that the Republicans have lied
about Johnson’s stand on metropolitan government, charging that he wants to
abolish towns and villages. There is no one type of metro government; Johnson
has simply suggested that we look at the possibility of some form of metro,
expanding the consolidations we already have. Even if he wanted to consolidate
every town and village, he could not bring it about. Only the voters could.
                 Far worse, the Republicans have injected the city’s
crime rate and “failing schools” into the campaign, as though those problems
would spread if Johnson were elected. The rhetoric began June 30 with Jack
Doyle’s State of the County speech and continued two weeks ago with a press
conference involving eight Republican town supervisors.
                 The
Republicans’ lies about metro government are abhorrent, but they were
predictable. Their posturing on crime and schools, however, is unconscionable.
And it is irresponsible.
                 The town supervisors are not stupid. Unless they’ve
been living in a cave the last quarter-century, they know the challenges facing
urban school districts across the country. They know that the Rochester
district serves a population of predominantly poor children. They know that
many of them enter school lacking the necessary emotional and intellectual
development. They know many of them go to school with multiple physical needs.
It is one thing to oppose any blending of city-suburban school
districts, to support small school districts with narrow boundaries. It is
quite another to insist that no matter how severe the Rochester schools’
problems are, and what the causes are, the mayor can fix them.
                 Even if you believe that without economic
integration, Rochester could provide a quality education to its high-poverty
population, the district could not possibly do it without help — a lot of
help. It would take a massive infusion of money for smaller classes, highly
talented teachers and aides, and special programs. And it would take massive
social-service assistance, for the students and their parents.
                 This is
not a small issue. And it is most decidedly a county issue. The future of the
Community of Monroe is heavily dependent on the quality of its workforce. The
future of the Community of Monroe will be dramatically affected by its social
service costs — the costs of feeding, housing, treating, and, all too often,
incarcerating its poor. Poor children who do not get a good education today
will have to be cared for, one way or another, by Monroe taxpayers tomorrow.
                 The suburbs can continue to bar the city’s poor
from their schools, but that does not relieve suburban residents of the
responsibility for educating those children. It does not relieve town
supervisors from the responsibility for educating them. And that responsibility
goes far deeper than sharing county taxes with the Rochester school district.
                 The education of allMonroe County
children is the responsibility of allMonroe County residents. And all Monroe
County elected officials — led by the county executive, in a nonpartisan
manner — ought to be involved in finding a way to educate the county’s
neediest children.
Likewise, the town
supervisors know very well the
complexities of crime. And they know how little elected officials can do to prevent
it. Mayors, town supervisors, county executives can beef up a police force to
try to protect us from crime. But they cannot prevent it. Most especially, they
cannot prevent the kind of crime from which Rochester is reeling right now:
young African-American males callously shooting each other.
                 This kind of crime is not bred in wealthy
neighborhoods. It is bred in impoverished neighborhoods spawning a culture in
which hope for a productive future is low, life is cheap, and violence is
acceptable.
                 This kind of crime is happening in the city because
that is where the community’s most impoverished people live. They cannot afford
to live elsewhere.
                 This kind of crime is not a problem that any mayor,
any city can solve. It is not a problem that the nation will solve overnight.
It will require jobs programs, education, and health and social-service
programs at a level not previously seen in this country. On the local level, it
will require intense, prolonged involvement by government, religious groups,
and citizens groups.
                 And it will require temperance and leadership from
elected officials.
                 Instead, as the county-exec campaign gears up,
Pittsford Supervisor Bill Carpenter — of whom I had expected far better —
charges that Johnson and his administration have failed “to address the serious
issues impacting city residents — things like rising violent crime,
plummeting property values, increasing taxes, and a failed school system.”
                 “As a town supervisor,” Carpenter said at last
week’s Republican press conference, “I have a responsibility for what happens
in my town. Isn’t it time Bill Johnson took responsibility for what happens in
the city?”
                 The Community of Monroe has serious problems:
poverty, urban crime, urban education, yes, but also a county fiscal crisis, a
hemorrhaging of young adults, rising government costs, and increasing job
losses. Last week alone, the mediareported
that Kodak plans still more local layoffs, ABB may leave the area, Valeo is
laying off employees, Wyeth has closed one local facility and plans to close
another.
                 “Metro” is a concept, with many variations. Job
layoffs are real. The Community of
Monroe is in serious trouble. The county-executive race offers a unique
opportunity to discuss these problems. That can’t happen in a climate of fear
and hate.
                 “Isn’t it time,” asks Pittsford’s Bill Carpenter,
“Bill Johnson took responsibility for what happens in the city?”
                 I have a question of my own, for Carpenter and
other Republican leaders:
                 How much do you love this community? Enough to stop
spreading your message of fear and division?
This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2003.
