“You can only unify people who want to come together,” our
political writer Jeremy Moule suggested late last week.
We were talking about the routing that local Republicans
gave Democrats in the November 3 election, and the disastrous division in the
local Democratic Party. But Jeremy’s comment is applicable to the condition of
Monroe County as a whole, the Democrats’ disarray aside.
Monroe County Republicans, heavily concentrated in the
suburbs, gained strength in the election, picking up one seat in the County
Legislature, which they now control 19-10. And they easily hung onto the county
executive’s office.
In the latter race, winner Cheryl Dinolfo
was helped a bit by the dismally low turnout in the nearly exclusively
Democratic city. And it didn’t hurt that Rochester Mayor Lovely Warren declined
to endorse Democrat Sandy Frankel. That’s likely yet another sign of the
serious – and distinctly racial – division among Monroe County Democrats. It’s
hard to blame Warren for not sharing her substantial funds, public support, and
clout with a party when some of its big operatives continued to fight her after
she won her party’s mayoral primary.
But I’m not sure Frankel could have won, regardless. So
maybe, for city residents, it was smart for Warren to stay neutral and not
fight someone she’ll need to work well with.
Because county government – its policies,
its priorities, its funding, its legislation – is critically important to the
city and its future. The county provides key social services for the
poor, many of whom live in the city. The County Legislature appoints the Public
Defender, whose office defends the poor. It nominates many of the board members
of the transit company, whose buses are a lifeline for many city residents. It
provides substantial funding for the public library.
It’s no secret that the county is financially strapped. And
no one, not Republicans and not the minority Democrats, is inclined to raise
taxes. On the county’s website, current County Executive Maggie Brooks notes
that Monroe County hasn’t raised the tax rate once in the 12 years she’s been
in office.
Since many costs have gone up, that has come at a price, in
budget reductions in some areas and in work-arounds like fees and chargebacks.
Among them: a charge on taxpayers’ tax bills related to the number of Monroe
Community College students in individual municipalities. In areas with numerous
MCC students, taxpayers are charged more. And obviously, more MCC students come
from areas with more low-income families, including the City of Rochester.
Budget cuts, fees, and charge-backs are likely to continue,
given the county’s long-running financial instability. It matters, then, how
important the city is in the eyes of the new county executive and the heavily
Republican legislature. Working with city officials, they could do great good.
But there is little short-term incentive for them to do so, because this is
structurally such a divided county, with every little municipality looking out
for itself.
But much of the county’s future is dependent on a healthy
city. And much of the city’s future health is dependent on our acting as one
community – not only in providing taxpayer-funded services for the poor but in
economic-development and other planning decisions that shore up the community’s
core rather than compete with it.
Few people can speak to the city’s needs the way Lovely
Warren can. If she and Cheryl Dinolfo build a true
partnership, if Warren can convince not only Dinolfo
but also the legislature Republicans, their party chair, and Republican town
leaders of the need to act as one community, that will be an accomplishment
that dwarfs some of the George Eastman-era reforms that we brag about.
Is that a naive hope? Maybe. But
changing attitudes toward the city will take a lot of education – one-to-one
personal lobbying of politicians in the suburbs. That will take a deep
understanding of the city and its residents’ needs, and it will take guts.
Warren has both. If she can’t pull it off, I’m not sure who can.
A version of this
column appears in print with the headline “Our divided Monroe.”
This article appears in Nov 11-17, 2015.
