Handsome Swede, in his excellent rebuttal picked up on this nugget from the State of The County:

“Monroe County’s unemployment rate is now at its lowest point in five years.”

True. But according to the Department of Labor fewer people are employed in Monroe now then when Brooks took office. All the unemployment rate means is that people are leaving.

And, IIRC, the unemployment rate doesn’t count folks that have given up looking. Oh, and how much are the jobs paying that are replacing the massive layoffs from Rochester’s “Big 3″? How will those sweet Wal-Mart wages keep the local economy humming?

Speaking of rebuttals, was there one from the Monroe County Dems? I checked their site and didn’t see anything. Who’s going to be Monroe County’s Jim Webb on this kind of stuff?

The D&C did ask an interesting question in an editorial today:

Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks, in trying to explain why her State of the County address gave short shrift to the county’s serious budget deficit, said the speech wasn’t meant to emphasize fiscal issues.

She said her solutions would become clear in the fall. The fall? As in months from now? Resolving the deficit demands leadership from Brooks now.

I love it when they get snarky. Well done, my friends.

Brooks should accept that her plan to raise the sales tax to 8.75 cents on the dollar as part of a Medicaid refinance plan has no traction in the state Legislature. This idea has been on the table for months and is no closer to legislative approval than it was on the first day.

Following that acknowledgement of reality, Brooks should, as she herself suggested Tuesday during an Editorial Board meeting, engage towns and school districts on a possible redistribution of sales-tax money or other county support to help Monroe fix its money woes.

The county is talking to the city — which gets the biggest piece of the sales-tax pie each year — about the options, and that’s fine. But the schools and towns must be part of the conversation now.

And the debate should be open. The public deserves to know what kinds of deals are being contemplated with the taxes it pays.

Wait– why would they need to make a point about open government? Oh. Man, I don’t always agree with the D&C ed board, but when I do, I agree wholeheartedly.