In the City Newspaper this week are 2 articles by Jeremy Moule, talking about the County Legislature and it’s budget deficits. The first, called “Creeping Credit Woes”, addresses Maggie’s refusal to accept the impending demise of her sales-tax intercept proposal (remember Maggie, the first stage of grief is denial).

Under the intercept plan, the state would pay for the county’s share of Medicaid costs, but it would take some of the county’s sales-tax revenue to do it. That would likely reduce the amount that the county shares with the city and the other municipalities.

Locally, there’s been strong opposition to the plan, and while Republicans in the County Legislature usually give Brooks what she wants, they may not want to stick their necks out on the intercept. The county executive’s position and 14 County Legislature seats will be on the ballot in November.

Although this plan would bump the county’s credit rating up a couple of notches (and that would be good, in regards to the interest the county will be paying through the years on this mounting deficit) it doesn’t seem palatable considering how the city and other municipalities would loose revenue on which they have come to depend.

In a second article, “Seeing Red Over Green”, the financial problems of the county are discussed in more detail. (for some reason the title has been changed from hard copy to online) Here the issue is addressed by the Democratic Legislators at a press conference:

What’s particularly alarming, Democrats said, is that the county has no reserves for emergencies or to help plug future gaps.

“There’s no money whatsoever available to use in future budgets,” said legislator Paul Haney.

And any time there’s a deficit at year’s end, the money has to be made up in future budgets, the Democrats said. Each year, the county has found some way, usually through one-shot revenues like the sale of county facilities or future tobacco settlement payments, to move into the black.

One of the suggestions that the Dems have, is turning the Water Authority into a county department. In lieu of recent developments with the Water Authority, this sounds smashing (and I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about this very soon in future posts at RT). Sadly, the Queen will hear nothing of what the Democratic Legislators are saying and in order for the public to hear what is going on behind the castle gates, a Website has been created by the Democrats in the Legislature.

Check it out.