For
Monroe County, next year
marks the end of an era.
After
2006, the county’s annual budgets will almost certainly top a billion dollars.
In fact, we may even top that mark in 2006. The budget proposed by County
Executive Maggie Brooks and adopted by the legislature in a 24-5 vote last week
totals $998.9 million. That leaves just $1.1 million to absorb changes from
revenue shortfalls and expense overages that may crop up during the year.
Despite
the legislature’s overwhelming support, it’s a budget that no one seems
terribly happy with. At last week’s Lej meeting, the
specter of ErieCounty hovered over
the chambers during the budget debate. Earlier this year, the state announced
that our neighbors to the west couldn’t get their fiscal act together and would
be going under a control board, just as the City of Buffalo had earlier.
MonroeCounty’s situation
is not that bad. Yet.
But
even as she released the 2006 budget, Brooks warned of possible deficits
reaching nearly $50 to $60 million dollars in each of the next two fiscal
years. She also warned that her budget was balanced on the temporary foundation
of one-shots — money that comes once and never again, like the money from the
state’s settlement with tobacco companies.
That
hasn’t escaped the notice of her critics. Minority Leader Stephanie Aldersley was among the five Democrats who voted against
the budget, pointing to the apparent lack of a plan for the future.
“This
is a head-in-the-sand budget,” Aldersley said during
the debate. That prompted Republican Legislator Mark Assini’s
vehement objection: “Just the opposite,” he said. “We’re providing stability in
a stormy time.” Which prompted Lynda Garner Goldstein to quip
that it was a “false sense of stability.” And so forth.
Partisan
jockeying for sound bites aside, both parties know they have a problem.
“We’ve
been very, very honest” about the fact that the budget required one-shots to
balance it, Brooks said Tuesday after the budget was adopted. And while
acknowledging that “that’s not the way to climb out of this situation,” she
defended the practice, saying, “We’re not going to leave money on the table.”
Brooks
and her Republican allies in the legislature cast the budget as the most
responsible stopgap measure on hand, buying the county time to fix “structural
imbalances.” (Translation: the county will soon be spending more money than
it’s taking in.)
“This
is a good budget for this community, and it gives us time to look ahead,”
Brooks said.
But
what do Brooks and the rest of her administration see when they look ahead?
As
she has tirelessly reminded voters, almost 80 percent of the county’s spending
is dictated by the state. That includes things like Medicaid and other
social-welfare programs, which are growing, not shrinking. Yet Brooks and the
Republican legislators who back her came to office promising that they would
not raise taxes. She’s already partially reneged on that by allowing the levy
(the total of property tax revenues) to rise with increased assessments and new
construction, while keeping the tax rate the same.
One
of the few revenue streams left to be tapped would be a small hike in the sales
tax. (It’s worth noting that while Republican legislature candidates in this
year’s races campaigned on keeping property taxes “stable,” they didn’t mention sales tax.)
In
the short run, Brooks appears to be pinning her hopes on finding savings in
Medicaid — particularly by rooting out fraud, waste, and inefficiencies in
the program locally. To that end, she’s appointed Bill Carpenter — her budget
director up until now — as the county’s new Medicaid Czar.
“This
is our voice for change in county government,” she said Tuesday. “I think it’s
important that we have a person in this administration focused on our most
important expense and one that has the greatest impact on the taxpayers in this
county.”
(And
though Carpenter will focus on local issues, Brooks has also campaigned on
national and state levels to change a formula that sticks it upstate
municipalities. She’s met with some success, working with other county
executives to secure a state cap on the amount of Medicaid money local
governments have to provide.)
Democrats
agree with Brooks that Medicaid is an important chunk of the budget to watch,
but they don’t fully share her optimism about finding lots of savings there.
Some even questioned whether the Medicaid Czar appointment was a wise one,
given Carpenter’s reputation as an outstanding budget director.
“I
really hope he’s going to find us a few million dollars,” says Aldersley. But, she adds, “there is no one silver bullet.”
Brooks’
willingness to move Carpenter to Medicaid Czar may be an indication of just how
desperate her administration is to find more savings. Aldersley
again: “I think she’s praying for that Medicaid fraud to pay off.”
Even if
targeting the terrible triplets of Medicaid waste, fraud, and abuse does pay big
dividends, Democrats complain that it still amounts to a one-shot. With or
without fraud, Medicaid costs are expected to maintain their steep ascent, and
even Brooks hasn’t claimed that Medicaid savings can forestall deficits in 2007
or 2008.
Dems want to know
what her plan is for tackling those deficits. Some of them — even a few who
voted for the new budget — don’t see evidence of such a plan in the spending
proposal.
“Long-term
deficits are not addressed in this budget,” Aldersley
told her fellow legislators. “It increases taxes. It increases spending. It
increases borrowing.”
Worse
still, she says, it “overstates revenue” and “understates expenses.” If that
turns out to be true, it might mean a deficit as early as 2006.
“We
cannot pretend everything is rosy,” Garner Goldstein urged. “We must be
preparing now.”
The
unspoken impetus in Goldstein’s words — one mentioned aloud by other
legislators during the debate — is the fear of sharing ErieCounty’s fate.
Buffalo and ErieCounty now run
chronic deficits yet have had to slash services and employees.
Legislator
Todd Bullard, who’s had experience working with governments in both cities,
says that didn’t have to happen. He points to Erie County Executive Joel Giambra’s insistence on cutting taxes in the face of
ballooning costs to fulfill a campaign promise.
“They
lacked the courage to do the right thing early on,” said Bullard. Still,
sticking to austere spending plans didn’t save Erie County Republicans, whose
minority status in the legislature was harshly reinforced in the recent
election. They now hold just three of the 15 seats, the lowest ratio in that
county’s history. The party, blaming Giambra, has cut
him off. Something similar could happen here, Bullard told the legislature.
“Sooner
or later the chickens are going to come home to roost,” he said.
Giambra is losing his grip on power for lowering taxes;
George Bush the senior lost his, in part, for raising them (“Read my lips”).
The political fate of both those men can’t be far from Maggie Brook’s mind as
she turns toward crafting a budget for 2007, the year she’ll face reelection.
This article appears in Nov 23-29, 2005.
