Howard Maffucci: “FAIR violates State Law.” We wonder: what’s next?
You may remember Howard Maffucci, the superintendent of the East Rochester School District, presentation to the Democratic Caucus hearings, Well, here are some additional details on his two objections to the Brooks-Minarik Tax Grab:
From his blog:
These two facts, which need to frame the entire discussion, are simple and straightforward.
* The revenue taken from the schools by the Monroe County Legislature isn’t the county’s money to take. It’s the schools’ money. In the 1980s, a bipartisan committee developed a formula known as “the Morin/Ryan Agreement,†which reaffirmed the fact that sales tax was never intended to provide funds solely for the county government, but rather to provide revenue equitably to the county, towns, villages, and schools. This is very simple to understand.
* The county legislature’s action is illegal. State law requires Monroe County to pay the schools their amount of sales tax, no matter the circumstance. The division of the sales tax cannot be arbitrarily changed by the legislature.
As you know, ER is party to the School District’s suit against the county. I suspect that the school districts will win the suit, but what then? The county hedged their bet by including the MCC Chargebacks as part of the plan, but if they aren’t allowed to take the schools’ money, we’re going to be looking at a very lopsided budget. Again.
This latest plan is just the latest in a long line of one-time fixes. They’ve spent the tobacco settlement money. They’ve picked the low-hanging fruit of early retirements and departmental efficiency improvements. They’ve sold off all of the assets. They’ve consolidated operations. They’ve pushed employee’s health care into next year’s budget. You name it, the Brooks administration has done it - doing their best after the madness of Doyle’s refusal to raise the levy. But they still haven’t solved the fundamental problem: For years, Monroe County has been spending more than it makes.
So my question is: What’s next? More accounting gimmicks? Are there any saleable assets left? Are there non-mandated programs that could be cut without committing political suicide? Do we need to - gasp - raise taxes?
What’s next?
Anyone?
Lay off some of those campaign staffers. That should cause a significant decrease in the County’s payroll and benefit costs.
Seriously - they should link up with the UofR and tap into the health care plan they offer and dump the Blues. The savings would be HUGE Rochester - HUGE uh.
What about putting jobs out to bid based on value and merit instead of patronage? That oughta save a bundle.
Naming rights to the COB, CityPlace, and VanLare WWTP…
Seriously, any ideas?
Sorry - I hate to say it - but maybe raising property taxes. In a forthright, open way. Although the taxes around her are pretty durn high. Don’t we really need to see the budget - expenses and income and where all of it comes from in detail - before making suggestions? I haven’t read the budget (which is online). Has anyone here? Does it break down the details of expenditures and income?
Yes, we need more services, and that requires more money. Cutting services is not the answer, raising taxes is. Let’s have a nice, progressive tax enacted here in Monroe County.
And let’s cut the pay of the County Executive in half (since Minarik is the one who actually does the work) and move some of that money into teacher’s salaries (yes, I know it wouldn’t amount to a hill of beans, but I like the symbolism).
Income. Tax.
I don’t oppose appropriate taxes at appropriate times. But for a faltering upstate town where the major industries have left, is income tax the way to go?
No. Raising taxes is NOT the answer.
The county didn’t make one damned cut - not one anywhere - to come up with this plan.
A while back, Brett Davison at Channel 10 did a report on a county worker who got paid big money, and never went to work. He screwed off all day long, and still got paid.
The county budget needs to be scrutinized by a community panel of experts and citizens for waste. I’ll guarantee you that if you ask the people who are paying for and supporting the county to look at where things can be cut without causing major inconvenience in services, they’ll do it.
Maggie Brooks is out of touch and only concerned about making certain her cronies are taken care of and her hair combed for the next PR session. She wouldn’t know a budget cut if it bit her on the ass. She was never qualified for her job, and let’s face it, Minarik has been running the show from behind the curtain, while Dorothy has entertained us running all over Oz.
The White House has spent us out, Pataki spent us out, and now we are led to believe that Maggie hasn’t?
The GOP don’t know how NOT to spend. They just prefer to raise property taxes through reassessing your property over and over and over again. I’m afraid to screw a new lightbulb into my porch light. I just know they’ll come running up to hand me the reassessment letter stating that the new light bulb has caused an increase in my property value *AND* overall an increase to my neighbors property values as well.
They play with smoke and mirrors. Take it all away and come up with a citizens panel to review that budget.
The county did commission a report by a panel of experts several years ago. I don’t think much waste was found in most of the county departments, many of which have employees who are overworked and, for the work they do, underpaid. But I don’t think there was scrutiny of the process used to award construction and business contracts. So I think that might be a place to start. At the top, you know?
The commission though Louis was made up of folks like the CEO of RG&E, and other corporate muckity mucks - I’m talking about having people with nothing to gain look it over, not corporations who sit like lap dogs for COMIDA funding on her lap.
I mean, we can’t even trust Wegmans anymore after seeing the huge COMIDA check they’re getting.
There is ALOT that we’re not being told or shown. That’s what needs to be exposed.
I tend to agree with Jiminy on this one. It’s all been smoke & mirrors and budget tricks, and fire sale gimmicks - we still haven’t sat down and made the hard decisions about which services are important to our community.
I hesitate to jump on the “county employee slacks off all day” bandwagon - that story strikes me as apocryphal. It raises my right-wing-rhetoric radar.
There are bad employees in any large organization. I’ll bet you can find that guy sleeping in the van working for RG&E, the MCWA, Kodak, Frontier, etc. Just because you can find one jerk doesn’t mean the rest of the county employees aren’t working their tails off for little money.
I also suggest that since the genie’s come out of the chargeback bottle, we can start pushing for a Road Patrol chargeback. That’s a much FAIR-er chargeback than the MCC chargeback, and could recoup the entire cost of the Road Patrol.
Very good point. The plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.
I think this situation presents a great opportunity for Upstate’s local leaders to band together to fight the source of our woes - Albany.
Rather than try to figure out a way to eke out an existence within an environment defined by the State, let’s change the game altogether.
The biggest problem facing NYS is its state government.
Thers’s big money in metro consolidation, but nobody is saying anything about that since elections are over. This was even a Spitzer initiative but I have heard little since. This would need to be done in a planned phased approach but then you would need planners for that.