When
County Executive Maggie Brooks declared at the outset of her first-ever State
of the CountyAddress that “the
state of our county has greatly improved,” she said she did so “with a clear
vision for our future.”
But what exactly that vision is was
unclear: Very little of what Brooks addressed was new.
There was, of course, her
announcement that she plans to extend the county’s prescription drug discount
program, currently available to seniors, to all the county’s residents. And she’s
launched a program to dole out $3,500 grants to homeowners for lead paint
abatement. But details of those plans — and what their financial impact on
the county might be — are yet to come.
Instead, Brooks served up a series
of pats on the back to programs already in place.
Perhaps the best example of this was
her tribute to the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, which took
up nearly 10 minutes of the 35-minute speech.
Using three businesses as examples, Brooks
touted the success of county efforts to grow the local economy. She cited
figures like the nearly 1,000 jobs the incentives are projected to create and
nearly 5,000 more they will retain. But the figure she led off with — the one
that’s supposed to make the case for the program’s success — is the 67
percent spike in the number of businesses using the incentives in 2004 over
2003, after COMIDA retooled some of the programs to make them more attractive.
Minutes later, however, she measured
the success of another program by a different yardstick.
“It’s because of innovative services
and programs like these [the Department of Human Services’ new St. Paul Street
welfare-to-work center],” Brooks said, “coupled with effective case management
that we ended 2004 with a net reduction in the total Public Assistance caseload
for three months in a row.”
Not
surprisingly, Brooks promoted the budget her administration prepared for
2005 and the Budget Advisory Team she assembled to help with it, while taking
the opportunity to call yet again for Medicaid reform in Albany.
But she passed up the chance to
express specific plans and goals for the county that typically mark executive
addresses at higher levels of government. Instead she revisited old (but
upbeat) news like the expected birth of a new elephant at the Seneca Park Zoo,
the rise in passenger traffic at the Greater Rochester International Airport,
and higher standards for the county’s four public authorities.
That could be because such positive
stories provided excellent fodder for the speech’s political purpose: to
reinforce Brooks’ image as a conciliator. At the opening of the address, she
identified as her signature accomplishment “the new spirit of cooperation that
we have established in county government.” Such rhetoric was peppered
throughout the address, which ended where it began: “Let’s be proud of what
we’ve become in the last year: One community, together again.”
That’s a tough
sentiment to disagree with, but the county legislature’s Democratic Caucus took up that
task, in a response delivered by Minority Leader Stephanie Aldersley following
the main address. With little in the way of specific statements to counter,
Dems turned the bulk of their attack toward a familiar target — and one that
undermines Brooks’ bid to cast herself as a uniter: partisan divisions.
“If words and deeds are to be met on
this matter, then the administration and the Republican Majority in the
legislature must deal with the legislature in a more fair and balanced manner,”
said Aldersley. “In the past year, Democrats in the legislature have made
numerous requests for information and proposed significant legislation on
behalf of the 300,000 residents we represent. The response has been, frankly,
no response.”
Aldersley went on to tick off a
litany of requests to the administration that went unanswered. Though she
conceded that Brooks’ administration has changed the tone of local government
for the better, she questioned whether that made any difference if the
day-to-day business of government was growing less cooperative.
You can read
the entire 2005 State of the CountyAddress at www.monroecounty.gov
This article appears in Jan 26 – Feb 1, 2005.
