When
Maggie Brooks released her first-ever county budget proposal, its contents were
a pleasant surprise to many. At first glance, it appeared balanced, and
essentially kept her promise to maintain services, albeit with an increase in
the tax levy.
Now
the honeymoon period is over, and groups on all sides are beginning to make
rumblings of discontent.
Almost
everyone who looked at the document noticed one section that normally wouldn’t
be included in a budget: a new procurement policy. The policy included in
Monroe County’s 2005 budget proposal makes one significant change from the
previous policy; it allows the county executive to waive the required request
for proposal (RFP) process for professional services purchased by the county.
Critics charge that the change will exacerbate a “pay to play” mentality that
already exists, in which contractors that provide services to the county make
donations to both political parties for a crack at lucrative contracts.
One
of those critics is Paul Haney, former county director of finance in the
administration of Democratic County Executive Tom Frey, who calls the move “one
of the most outrageous assaults on decent government practice that I’ve ever
seen.” He believes the policy change was slipped into the budget because a past
decision by the state’s courts ruled that anything in the budget is
automatically adopted, unless specifically amended by the legislature.
“What
is being proposed here is a political leader’s dream,” says Haney. “I have to
believe this is pure Steve Minarik [chair of the Monroe County Republican
Committee].” The county spends millions of dollars each year on professional
services, Haney says. “This means that it will simply go to the highest bidder
in terms of contributions to the Republican Party machine.”
Haney
disparages the notion that the change would give an executive necessary
flexibility in emergencies, saying that state law already provides for that.
His real concern is that when the legislators look at contracts for approval,
they won’t know if they’re being responsible with taxpayer dollars.
“They’re
will be nothing to compare it too,” he says. “The legislature will have no idea
whether the price being suggested is reasonable or unreasonable because there
will be nothing else on the table.”
The
ability to waive the RFP process with no explanation could make it far easier
for the county executive to simply hand expensive contracts to the politically
connected — at taxpayers’ expense, says Haney.
But
Bill Smith, leader of the Republican majority in the legislature, says he
doesn’t oppose the measure and downplays such fears.
“The
key thing is that the county legislature still retains power to approve these
things. So it’s not a blank check,” for the county executive, he says. Even in
cases where the administration might send the legislature a contract without an
RFP or information about other potential firms, Smith says, there’s still a
system of checks and balances in place: “Then the legislature has the choice to
say ‘no,'” he says.
Rochester
Mayor Bill Johnson was less outspoken about the city’s concerns with the
budget, which he says is still being analyzed. One change in particular that
does worry him is the in-sourcing of foster care. “It’s going to cause
tremendous hardship to a lot of agencies,” in the city, he says. Still, he
says, Rochester fares better under Brooks than in the past. “Let’s put it this
way, in previous years it’s been a lot worse,” Johnson says.
Jim
Valpone, with the Civil Service Employees Association (the largest union
representing county employees) says his organization has identified 14 people
whose positions have been eliminated. But CSEA is also still analyzing the
budget, says Valpone, and not ready to make criticisms.
The
same can’t be said for another union: The Federation of Social Workers
incorporated complaints about the budget into a protest over their lack of a
contract, high caseloads, and what they see as the dangerous short-changing of
programs like Child Protective Services. The group released a study last week
entitled “A Tragedy Waiting to Happen…” which states that CPS investigators
handle an average of 26 cases at a time — more the twice the number
recommended by the Child Welfare League of America.
The
FSW report directly criticizes the recommendations of Brooks’ Budget Advisory
Team, which included substantial cuts to social services. Even though those
cuts weren’t enacted, the union is aggressively putting forward its own
recommendations to counter those of the BAT report. Among them: adopting a plan
by the democratic minority to re-import Canadian prescription drugs for
employees on the county’s health plan, restoring the property-tax rate to
pre-1992 levels, and restructuring the county’s debt.
Yet
another criticism came from the recently departed Democratic legislator Jay
Ricci. He claims the county has overestimated state and federal aid for its
tenth consecutive budget, averaging about 10 percent more than actual aid
figures. He’s not entirely certain it’s a coincidence, either.
“There’s
no way that you can make this mistake 10 years in a row,” he says. Using
figures from 2003 — the most recent available — Ricci estimates the county
will receive closer to $270 million from Washington and Albany, rather than the
$303 million predicted in the administration’s budget proposal. But Ricci says
the administration’s budget doesn’t use the latest figures. “It isn’t rocket
science: you use past performance to predict future outcome,” he says.
A
public hearing on the Brooks budget proposal is scheduled for Thursday,
November 4, Legislative Chambers, County Office Building, 39 West Main Street,
at 5:30 p.m.
This article appears in Oct 27 – Nov 2, 2004.
