It
is City Newspaper‘s practice to
refrain from campaign commentary the week prior to an election, to help insure
that candidates have the opportunity to respond to our views.
We are breaking from that practice,
reluctantly, this week, to analyze and comment on the proposed 2004 county
budget. The county’s fiscal condition is the single most important issue in
this year’s county-executive race. The 2004 budget will have a major impact on
the county’s financial future, and the budget was not released in time for
analysis in last week’s issue.
Readers will note that our analysis
is critical of the Republican candidate for county executive, Maggie Brooks,
and of the Republican leadership. Despite repeated attempts, we have not been
able to contact Brooks to get her comments on the budget for this week’s
newspaper. We encourage Brooks, Republican leaders, and other critics of our
analysis to send us letters this week; we’ll post them immediately on our
website (www.rochester-citynews.com). And we encourage readers to watch our
website for such letters. They’ll be listed as “Budget feedback.”
This article appears in Oct 29 – Nov 4, 2003.
