I’d
say the county budget process this year reads like a dime-store novel, but that
wouldn’t be fair. It has more literary merit than that. And there is so much
more at stake.
           There’s pathos aplenty, to be sure.
See the throngs of desperate people who’ve been turning up at lej meetings,
alternately begging and demanding lawmakers preserve their programs.
           There’s also an element of
espionage. Members of the lej’s opposing parties have been meeting — or not,
depending on whom you ask — to close a $42 million budget gap without
sky-high tax increases or draconian cuts. But nobody will say who is meeting
with whom and what exactly they may be working on. Some legislators predict
that a budget vote could come at any time, but that, too, is up in the air.
           There may also be a hint of
blackmail in the works. Is the proposed Safety Net shift — putting welfare on
a charge-back system — a way to lure Democrats in the county lej to the
bargaining table? Under the Republican proposal, Safety Net costs would be
assessed to the municipalities in which the recipients live, with the
municipalities assumingly receiving a bill. Ninety percent of the recipients
live in the city. The plan might be a way to pressure state assembly Dems,
who’ve said no dice to Doyle’s proposed sales tax increase.
           “Sometimes, to negotiate or get
things done, folks play a little bit of a card game, matching various interests
against one another,” says Republican legislator Mark Assini. “It’s like the
only way to gain leverage in the assembly, especially with our state
delegation. It says, ‘OK, if you’re not going to be able to work with us on the
sales tax thing, then we’ll find another way. And unfortunately, the way we
found is not pleasing to the assembly delegation.’ That’s, right now, how our
political system works: Who has leverage on whom?”
           But state assemblyman David Gantt
says the GOP is wasting its time.
           “I think what they should do is go
back and talk to their Democratic colleagues on the legislature,” he says. “I
haven’t seen any sales-tax proposal. I don’t know how they could be leveraging
something that I haven’t seen.”
           I believe, perhaps naively, that
everyone in the legislature is operating in what they honestly think is the
public good. Undermining that, however, is a lack of trust between parties and,
sometimes, within the parties themselves. Factor into that the standard
philosophy of partisan politics: “Never do anything that makes the other side
look good,” and real structural problems within the budget itself, and you get
a great, big mess.
So, how will this all play
out? I wouldn’t count anything out. Republican legislator Mike Hanna says some
sort of property tax increase is “inevitable.”
           Hanna, incidentally, is a key player
in the budget negotiations, if my anonymous source is to be believed. Look to
Mike Hanna and fellow Republican Ray Santirocco to “set the stage” for the
resolution to the mess, this insider said, before straightening his trench coat
and lurching off into the night.
           Hanna and Santirocco deny playing
any special role in the budget dealings.
           “I’ve known some of the Democrats
for a long time and so has Mike,” Santirocco says. “And it’s easier to talk under
those circumstances. But I really don’t want to describe my role as anything
other than a toiler in the vineyard.”
           Santirocco says he’s hopeful that
the budget drama will be resolved with an amendment supported “by a majority on
both sides.”
           As far as the sales tax goes, that’s
up to Democrats in the county lej, Santirocco says. They have to be the ones to
go to the assembly delegation and ask them to “please postpone your desire to
trash Maggie Brooks and help people out of this hole.”
           Assini believes that some of his
Republican colleagues are indeed holding out hope that a sales-tax increase
might still work.
           “Obviously we would like the
assembly delegation to work with the County of Monroe, but if they’re not
willing to do that, then we have other choices that we have to make,” he says.
           Hanna says the whole thing may be
solved with a combination of a property tax increase, cuts, and charge backs,
but that’s just one possibility.
           “It’s wide open, still,” he says.
I do believe the parties
will work together in some capacity. How can they not? The Republicans, surely,
don’t want to be held solely responsible for a budget that is going to be
painful any way you slice it. And no matter how strong their desire to see
Republicans squirm, I can’t believe Democrats are just going to sit back, mute,
and watch the GOP cut crucial programs and dump a $14 million Safety Net bill
on the city.
           Ed Lundberg, a political science
professor at MCC, agrees. He says the secrecy is necessary to preserve a
delicate negotiation process. Leaking plans to the press, he says, could blow
the whole thing.
           Lundberg, too, believes there’s life
in some sort of mutated sales-tax proposal.
           “I do believe the state is going to
have to come to the aid of the city and county,” he says. “This is a very, very
serious shortfall. The state delegation eventually will come around, after they
are properly approached.”
           If I were to go out on a limb, I’d
say that some sort of bipartisan agreement will emerge that no one will like
but that both sides will agree to live with. I’d bet that agreement does not
include a Safety Net shift. In fact, Stephanie Aldersley, Democratic minority
leader in the lej, says that members of her caucus will not negotiate until
Safety Net is off the table.
           Social services is a big piece of
the pie, and Santirocco has said that when you need to make cuts, you look
first to the big numbers. But I can’t imagine what that would do to a
department already reeling from reorganization earlier this year. I hope they
won’t make further cuts, but it could happen. As a Democratic insider points
out, if the Safety Net shift is taken off the table, the county has to come up
with the money to keep the program going somehow.
Democrats,
Aldersley says, are not inclined to vote for anything Republicans have “run
up the flagpole” so far. That means no Safety Net shift and no big cuts in
social services. Democrats are also opposed to the sales-tax increase,
according to Aldersley.
           “I hope it’s dead,” she says. “But
it’s a very, very fluid situation.”
           There have been informal meetings
between members of her caucus and the Republican caucus, she says, but both
sides “are still very far apart.” Democrats do not have a counter proposal to
the Doyle budget, Aldersley says, but are waiting for a Republican amendment to
use as a “working point.”
           The process has been so secretive,
Aldersley says, because nobody wants to be the first one to say big cuts or tax
increases are in the works.
           “Whoever does that has no future in
politics,” she says.
This story
needs a hero; someone to swoop in and save the day. Could it be county
executive-elect Maggie Brooks? Democrats are leaving the door wide open. Brooks
has said that she can balance the budget without service cuts, higher taxes, or
job losses. Presumably, Democrats say, she knows how she’d do it. So why is she
keeping this precious information to herself?
           “We’d really like an opportunity to
talk with her about how to do that,” Aldersley says, adding that she will not
support anything that doesn’t have the backing of the new county executive.
           “If there’s one thing I want you to
put in the paper, it’s that,” Aldersley says.
This article appears in Nov 19-25, 2003.
