The Ed Board rightly takes the Brooks administration to task for not having a Plan B to close the budget gap:

Brooks’ Plan B

Foremost, where is it? County budget gap isn’t getting better

(July 11, 2007) — Monroe County’s credit status is wobbly, to say the least. Its budget deficit through 2009 has already surpassed $100 million. And County Executive Maggie Brooks is sticking to her 2003 campaign pledge: No new property taxes.Of course, no one wants higher taxes, and no one understands that better than Brooks, who is seeking re-election to a second term in November. Monroe, after all, now has some of the highest property taxes in America.

But what’s Plan B? All that Brooks’ administration will say is “we’re working on it.” Well, time is running out and the county’s fiscal forecast is starting to look bleaker and bleaker.

Reminds me of Bush saying about Iraq, “It’s hard work!” Oh, and this is funny:

So given this predicament, it’s unsettling that a Brooks spokesman, John Durso, had only this to say: “We are working to try to come up with a solution to protect property taxpayers and protect our quality of life. Short of property taxes hikes, everything is on the table.”

Talk about vague, politically correct speech. Does that mean layoffs, service cutbacks? He wouldn’t budge.

He wouldn’t budge? So, he’s basically telling you this:

Which is kind of appropriate for the whole PR strategy of the Minarik/Brooks administration, really. Smile while telling y’all to kiss off when you want to peer behind the curtain.

The editorial had the expected comments excitedly saying we should “cut services!”, but The Voice of Reason got to the heart of it nicely:

Plan B is simple. Get Brooks re-elected. Then, after the election is over with, pass a budget in which the county takes back a portion of the sales tax revenue from the city, towns, villages and school districts, in order to balance the county’s growing deficit.

The Democrats have proven to be inept when it comes to using the budget deficit as a campaign issue. Instead they are wasting time trying to find someone to run against Brooks when they should have been working to find qualified candidates to run for the County Legislature.

The key to this election is control of the legislature; not the County Executive’s job. Unfortunately for the Democrats the locks have been changed and the key doesn’t fit anymore. Therefore the public can expect another four years of one-stop measures to plug budget gaps while the Republicans continue to sing their tired old song of “we didn’t raise your property taxes.”

What you won’t hear from the GOP is the second verse which mentions increasing local fees and a tax increase from other municipalities and school districts that have lost revenue from the Morin-Ryan plan.

THANK YOU for pointing out that what appears to be a free lunch usually ISN’T.

Now, as far as I know, there’s been a lot of work done to find good County Leg candidates. But I agree, they gotta flip the Leg to stop the “business as usual” crap going on there. Or more appropriately, “BAD business as usual”.

And for those commenters who falsely asserted that the Dems haven’t come up with a counter-proposal, sorry– they have. It’s called reform. It has short-term and long-term savings. More on that soon.